286 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



which is heart-breaking to the sporting tenant who endeavours 

 to increase the number of deer ; and that is the fact, that the 

 young male deer, those that I should call the sorels and sors, 

 or the three and four- year-old male deer, invariably migrate to 

 other mountains. This has been proved in the last ten years, 

 during which Lord Malmsbury has rented Achnacarry, by his 

 having marked more than thirty individuals, only one of whom 

 has ever been seen again. The woods which shelter the deer are 

 also every year deteriorating, from what seems to me to be an 

 injudicious felling of some of the most beautiful pines in 

 improper places. I observe that wherever, on the hill-sides, 

 the factor has caused the timber to be cut, the wind rushes in 

 and completes the destruction. As many a gallant Cameron, 

 while fighting for his prince, has fallen when the tide of war 

 broke his ranks, and prevented the clan from standing shoulder 

 to shoulder; so do these primeval trees, when thinned, sink 

 before the blast that, jointly, they had defied for centuries. In 

 the indiscriminate and too extensive burning of the heather 

 the interests of the tenant of the mansion are not fairly 

 considered; and I have observed such wide tracts of heath 

 consumed, that I am pei-fectly sure that not only has it been 

 done to an extent inimical to deer and game, but even to the 

 flocks of sheep. I presume that the heather on these mountains, 

 after being burnt, does not reach perfection again for a period 

 of full fifteen years ; and if I am right in that assumption, the 

 conflagrations having been so widely extended, although more 

 food is produced, the benefit of that food is considerably 

 lessened by the absence of all shelter ; shelter, and a certain 

 amount of warmth being necessary, as we all know, to the 

 increase and condition of sheep as well as cattle. There is, also, 

 another nuisance to the preserver of deer and game on these 

 mountains permitted to exist, that with great advantage might 

 be got rid of This nuisance arises from an unlimited per- 

 mission being given to a man known as a fox- or " tod-hunter," 

 who keeps from twenty to thirty cui-s and dogs of all sorts — a 

 dog for everything, in fact — who roams these hills, deer forest 



