208 PROTECTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



among the Pentland Hills; and in a charter of 1328 he 

 conferred on the monks of Newbattle an annual donation 

 of five harts at the feast of St Cuthbert's Translation, to 

 be taken from his forest of Selkirk. There, too, Bruce's 

 successor, David II, hunted; in 1330, his Chamberlain 

 paid 245-. for "a chalder of large salt for salting the king's 

 venison at Selkirk," and in the following year, 165. for salt 

 for the venison at Ettrick Forest. In 1334 David renewed 

 the grant made by his father to the Priory of Newbattle. 



The history of the Red Deer in the Lowlands is carried 

 down to the sixteenth century by Lindsay of Pitscottie who 

 records that 



the second day of June the King [James V, the year being 1528] passed 

 out of Edinburgh to the hunting with many of the Nobles and Gentlemen 

 of Scotland with him to the number of twelve thousand Men ; and then 

 past to Meggitland, Crammat, Popert Law, St Mary's Laws, Carlaverick, 

 Chapel, Ewindoores, and Longhope. I heard say he slew in these Bounds, 

 eighteen score of Harts. 



Although deer were evidently still plentiful in 1528, by 

 the middle of the century constant slaughter and, more 

 important, the development of farming and of the practice 

 of pasturing upon the Lowland hills large flocks of sheep, 

 sometimes ten thousand in number, as Bishop Leslie tells 

 us, led to such a decrease in the numbers of Red Deer that 

 vigorous efforts were made to protect the relics of the herds. 

 In 1551 in the reign of Queen Mary, a Statute was passed 

 complaining that "deare, rae, or uther wild beasts and wild 

 fowles are clean exiled and banished by schutting with 

 half-hag, culvering, and pistolet," and enjoining "that nane 

 of our soveraine ladies lieges, of quhatsumever degree hee 

 be of, take upon hande to schutte" at these animals "under 

 the paine of death and confiscation of all their gudes for 

 their contemplation." Notwithstanding, no measure could 

 check the downward way of the lowland Red Deer, and 

 with the troubles and lawless years of the seventeenth 

 century, and the steady growth of agriculture, they were 

 finally banished from the uplands and forests of southern 

 Scotland. 



MODES OF DEER PROTECTION 



From a general point of view the modes adopted by 

 Scots law in protecting deer range round several well 



