PROTECTION OF ANIMALS FOR SPORT 207 



consequent encouraging of Black-headed Gulls in order that 

 their eggs might supply the game-birds with food, led to the 

 alteration of a local flora, and the replacement of the old by 

 a new association of animals. To this interesting succession 

 of results more detailed reference will be made elsewhere 

 (see p. 501). 



THE DEER FOREST 



"The Scottes," said Holinshed, "sette all their delighte 

 in hunting and fowling"; so it came to be that, as the 

 numbers of wild animals diminished, the beasts of the chase 

 fell under a system of protective laws as strict as those which 

 governed the fowling quarry. Chief of the hunted was the 

 Red Deer: 



The best of chase, the tall and lusty Red, 



The stag for goodly shape and statelinesse of head, 



Is fitt'st to hunt at force. 



It is not too much to say that but for the care which has 

 been taken of it by the law, the Red Deer in Scotland would 

 probably long ere now have followed to extinction the 

 Scottish Reindeer and the Elk. 



The system of protection dates from a very early period, 

 for in former days the Red Deer was royal game, "inter 

 regalia'' and could be hunted only by the King himself or by 

 those to whom he had given a grant of forestry. Yet in the 

 Fragmenta Collecta of Scottish law, of uncertain date, a 

 curious rule is made for deciding property in Deer: Deer 

 were to be regarded as wild by nature, but in forests they 

 were "thine as long as they have a desire to come to thee, 

 and when they have no desire to come again they are not 

 thine." 



RED DEER IN THE LOWLANDS 



It is interesting to note how frequently from the eleventh 

 down to the sixteenth century the nobles of Scotland 

 pursued the Red Deer in areas whence they have long since 

 disappeared. David I (1124-1 153) had a hunting house at 

 Crail in Eastern Fifeshire; Walter the Stewart, in found- 

 ing the Abbey of Paisley in 1 160, granted the monks a tithe 

 of his hunting, with the skins of the deer slain in his forest of 

 Ferenze in Renfrewshire. Robert the Bruce (1306-1329) 

 was repeatedly baulked by a white deer which he started 



