338 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST 



Deer also is stalked, yet its characters have persisted in their 

 magnificence 1 . ' 



A broad reading of the facts shows indubitably that the 

 destruction of the forest has impelled the Red Deer of 

 Scotland on a downward path, limiting its numbers, de- 

 creasing its range, and whittling away its former dignity by 

 steps of physical decadence. 



THE REINDEER 



As a Scottish animal the Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus] 

 (Fig. 58) has long since disappeared, yet for many thou- 

 sands of years this interesting animal, now confined to the 

 northern regions of the Old World and eastern Canada, 

 roamed upon our plains from the Solway to the Pentland 

 Firth, and was even established in the Orkney Islands. 

 Its antlers have been found in deposits belonging to the 

 Ice Age at Kilmaurs in Ayrshire (Fig. 59, p. 343), where 

 were also found the tusks of the extinct Mammoth, at Croft - 

 amie in Dumbartonshire, and at Raesgill in Lanarkshire. 

 Clearly it entered Scotland during one of the mild periods 

 which broke the long monotony of the age of glaciers. 



But the Reindeer in Scotland survived the disappearance 

 of the cold climate which had enticed it to enter Britain from 

 the Continent. Cut off by the formation of the English 

 Channel from retreat along the route of its invasion, it was 

 compelled to make the best of changing climates and con- 

 ditions. In this effort of adaptation it met with considerable 



1 If further proof of the implication of the destruction of the forest in 

 the degeneracy of Scottish Red Deer were required, it is indicated by the 

 history of Scottish Deer transported to New Zealand. In 1870 seven Red 

 Deer from Lord Dalhousie's estate in Forfarshire were liberated in the 

 neighbourhood of Lake Hawra, South Island. These have multiplied into 

 the famous North Otago herd of which, in Hunter Valley alone, 1600 were 

 destroyed in 1915-16; and the size of the Deer and quality of their antlers 

 have responded to the abundance of food available in the heavy bush lands. 

 Thus, although there is no strain of "park" blood in the North Otago herd, 

 a writer in Cottntry Life (9 August, 1919) recorded and illustrated two 

 magnificent and evenly developed heads of Deer shot in 1918, one bearing 

 sixteen points, the other with twenty points, a length of 45 \ inches and a 

 span of 45 inches reversions to the old standard which signify that 

 the banishing of our Scottish Red Deer from their natural haunts to waste 

 and barren moorlands is responsible for their physical deterioration. 



