EFFECTS UPON ANIMAL LIFE 337 



1830 in a peat moss at Smeaton- Hepburn in Haddington- 

 shire. It compares ill with such examples as I have just 

 mentioned, for it is only a twelve pointer Royal, yet it must 

 have stood 4 ft 6 inches at the shoulder, and the length of its 

 body from nose to base of tail must have been 7 ft 10 inches. 

 A modern Scottish Royal, a good stag, shot in the forest of 

 Corrour and now in the Royal Scottish Museum, stands 

 3 ft 5 inches at the shoulder, and its body is 5 ft 7 inches 

 long. The old-time Red Deer was a third as large again as 

 a selected modern example. (See Frontispiece.) 



It is apparent that the Red Deer of the Scottish High- 

 lands cannot compare in physique with the Red Deer which 

 dwelt in the Lowlands in the days before man's coming. 

 The process of decay was a gradual one, for bones which 

 I have examined from recent excavations in the hill-fort 

 of Dunagoil in Bute, and in the caves of Eastern Fife, 

 both settlements which were occupied in the days of 

 the early Christians still indicate Red Deer of much 

 greater size than those of to-day. And even in Orkney 

 in the days of the brochs, the remains of Red Deer "often 

 of large size" were deposited in those strange defensive 

 structures. 



What was the cause of the gradual decay of the Red 

 Deer in Scotland ? Clearly the destruction of the forest ! 

 Red Deer are pre-eminently forest animals, as their distribu- 

 tion in the still existing pine belts of Europe shows. But in 

 Scotland the forest in which they thrived has disappeared, 

 and the Red Deer have been driven to an unnatural home 

 on waste moorlands and in bare mountain glens. As 

 if to settle the question of the decadence of Scottish Red 

 Deer, there are still to be found in the native forests of the 

 Continent, in western, northern and central Europe, 

 descendants of the original Red Deer stock races (Cervus 

 elaphus typicus and Cervus elaphus germanicus} the size 

 and complexity of the antlers of which forcibly remind 

 one of the antlers of the Scottish mosses. Where the 

 forests have persisted the Red Deer in its original gran- 

 deur has persisted with them. It may be suggested that 

 the shooting of the finest heads in a sporting country such 

 as Scotland may have lowered the standard. This may 

 be so to a slight degree, but on the Continent the Red 



