212 PROTECTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



winter, were it not that the "forest" does not afford sufficient 

 sustenance for the numbers of deer upon it? And how else 

 can we account for the great mortality that occurs from 

 natural causes every season ? In the deer-forests of Jura, 

 a count extending over ten years revealed the fact that, over 

 and above the slaughter due to sport, an average of more 

 than one hundred deer died every year. The conclusion that 

 protection has increased the stock beyond the capacity of the 

 country, is confirmed by the fact that while the total number 

 of deer in Jura is now over 2,000, in Martin's day, in the 

 closing years of the seventeenth century, the hills ordinarily 

 had "about three hundred Deer grazing on them," and even 

 then they were protected, for they were "not to be hunted 

 by any, without the Steward's License." 



The War has further emphasized the tendency to over- 

 protection. During the past thirty years, the area of Scottish 

 deer forests has increased by many thousands if not by 

 millions of acres. Deer have now become so numerous, 

 partly owing to the absence of sportsmen and keepers on the 

 trail of greater game, that they have overrun great stretches 

 of the best sheep-grazings and are said to have destroyed 

 fields of valuable crops within twelve miles of Glasgow. So 

 serious a menace have they become to the interests of agri- 

 culture and to the food-supply of the nation, that the pro- 

 tective legislation which has held sway from time immemorial 

 has been rescinded for the time being. An order of the 

 Board of Agriculture for Scotland issued in February 1917 

 authorizes the occupier of any agricultural holding in Scotland 

 to kill, by any means available, deer that are trespassing on 

 his grazings, or causing injury to his crops; and this with 

 only a gun licence and without even a licence to kill game 

 surely a measure and an expedient which might well raise 

 from their last resting-places the Scots law-makers of old, 

 with their mutilations and their hangings. 



Nevertheless, in spite of the severity of the old laws of 

 the deer-forest and their one-sided point of view, naturalists 

 owe them a debt of gratitude ; for, taking account of the 

 influence of changed conditions upon the deer themselves 

 (see under Destruction of Forests, p. 335), of the present 

 necessity for artificial feeding in many areas, of the annual 

 tale of natural deaths, of the history of the lowland Red 



