334 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST 



still common when the brochs were in full occupation ; and 

 the occupants of the cave of Borness on the shores of Kirk- 

 cudbright bordering the Solway Firth, slew many Red Deer 

 in their Lowland valleys in times after the Roman Conquest. 



From the earliest times, therefore, down to the eighth 

 century of our era or later, the Red Deer was abundant in 

 every corner of Scotland, not only in the uplands but in the 

 valleys to the very margin of the sea (see Map V). From the 

 low-lying valleys it was soon driven by the increase of man 

 and of his rude agriculture, and by the destruction of the 

 forest, for the Red Deer, in spite of its mountainous habita- 

 tions in Scotland at the present day, is pre-eminently a forest- 

 loving animal. 



Thus we find that when Scottish history first takes up 

 the tale of the Red Deer in the Lowlands, it had already 

 forsaken the lower valleys, and had been relegated to forest 

 areas then existing on the slopes of the Pentland Hills and 

 to the great Ettrick Forest of the uplands of Selkirk and the 

 neighbouring counties. In another connection (p. 207) I have 

 given a short account of the main events of its history in 

 the Lowlands as recorded in Scottish annals, until, towards 

 the end of the seventeenth century, several factors, amongst 

 which was the disappearance of forest in the face of an 

 increasing culture of the soil and of a gradual extension of 

 the pasturing of sheep, finally exterminated the Red Deer 

 of the Scottish Lowlands 1 . At the present time, in spite of 

 centuries of protection, the Red Deer is confined to the 

 Highlands, where it inhabits waste moorlands and scanty 

 woods at high altitudes, from Sutherland to Perthshire and 

 Argyll. 



That the destruction of woodlands has a very real 

 ' influence upon the distribution of Red Deer has been 

 actually observed and noted within the past century. The 

 brothers, John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart, in 

 describing in 1848 the death of the last Deer of Tarnaway 

 Forest on the southern shores of the Moray F^irth, say, from 

 their own experience : 



1 Although the end of the seventeenth century saw the practical ex- 

 termination of Lowland Red Deer, a few individuals probably still lingered 

 in secluded places, for it is said that the last stag in the Forest of Buchan 

 in Kircudbrightshire was shot in 1747. 



