PROTECTION OF ANIMALS FOR UTILITY 221 

 PROTECTION OF FUR-BEARING ANIMALS 



When one thinks of the extent and of the content of the 

 great fur countries in the northern territories of the Old and 

 the New World, exporting annually their hundreds of thou- 

 sands of valuable pelts, it seems as if the limited fauna of 

 Scotland could never have ventured to take part in the trad- 

 ing of furs. Yet it is not so, for long before those northern 

 regions had been tapped, Scotland, as we have already seen 

 (p- J 55)> was much resorted to by the merchants of the 

 Continent on account of the rich furs it exported. Skins 

 of the mertrick (marten), foulmart (polecat), beaver, otter, 

 tod (fox), whitret (weasel, perhaps also stoat or ermine), and 

 cunning (rabbit), were exported in quantity. In view of the 

 importance of this trade in furs, it seems extraordinary that, 

 apart from a few regulations limiting the wearing of the more 

 valuable kinds to men of high degree, and a few enactments 

 levying a toll upon exported skins, the law made no attempt 

 to foster so valuable an asset by endeavouring to protect the 

 animals themselves, except in the solitary case of the rabbit. 



THE RABBIT 



In another place I have discussed the introduction and 

 establishment of the Rabbit in Scotland (p. 247), so that 

 here I would do no more than indicate its standing as a fur- 

 bearer and the protection which has been awarded it on this 

 account. Although of no mean value as a food animal, the 

 Rabbit owes its early preservation rather to the quality of its 

 skin. Witness the statement of Dr John Campbell in his 

 Political Siirvey of Great Britain, published in 1774: 



Their Flesh at a proper Age, and in proper Seasons, is thought equally 

 wholesome and delicate. But this, though in some Degree an Object of 

 Profit, did not so much recommend or render them so valuable, as their 

 Skins, which are now much reduced in their Price from a Variety of Causes, 

 and though thus reduced they are still of no despicable Value. 



He goes on to say that in his time "it hath been computed, 

 that Skins included, the annual Produce of Rabbits within 

 the Bills of Mortality comes to about Forty Thousand 

 Pounds." 



The price of a rabbit for food was fixed in Scotland in 



