338 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



migan, blackcock, all kinds of waterfowl, and especially 

 grouse, breed upon these moors in great plenty : fallow 

 and red deer have also been artificially propagated upon 

 them. Fashion has given great value to these sports. 

 A hill stocked with game lets for 50 for the season. 

 Shooting-lodges, built in the most retired spots, are let, 

 including the right of shooting over the adjacent hills, at 

 500. What is called a forest that is to say, several 

 thousands of acres, not exactly planted with trees, but 

 reserved for deer to the exclusion of all kinds of cattle 

 brings an extravagant rent. The large Scotch proprietors, 

 following the example of William the Conqueror, have laid 

 out many of these forests upon their estates. Gentlemen 

 go there at great expense to enjoy the sport of shooting 

 the fleet monarchs of these wilds in their precipitous 

 retreats expeditions which are all the more attractive 

 from the fatigue imposed and some little danger that 

 attends them, and which revive in these children of the 

 North the wild instincts of their forefathers. 



Nothing is more fashionable than Highland sports. 

 The pencil of Landseer, the favourite delineator of British 

 sport, has described under every form its most stirring 

 incidents ; and that bustle which, for two or three months 

 in the year, awakens in the slumbering echoes of the 

 rocks something like the gathering of the clans, results 

 in handsome incomes to the proprietors. 



Public opinion, which, after much hesitation, at last 

 approved of the expulsion of the Highlanders, has for 

 a long time sanctioned the Scotch deer-forests as the 

 valuable remains of a former state of things now properly 

 abolished. People, however, are beginning to murmur 

 against these last vestiges of ancient feudalism, contend- 

 ing that the deer are too few in number profitably to 

 occupy the vast tracts set apart for them, and that it would 



