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this excellent food, supplied alone through the means of Sport, does not 

 fetch one-eighth of what it cost to kill, therefore the British public 

 can buy it as cheap as any other fish, flesh, or fowl. 



Emanating from land agitators we hear constantly outcries against 

 tracts of land being set apart to grouse moors and deer forests to the 

 exclusion of cotter and crofter tenants. Does it occur to those one- 

 sided soothsayers that, with the exception of a very limited area, the 

 land devoted to the grouse and the deer is totally unouited to cultiva- 

 tion ? Except after years of the hardest and most unremunerative 

 labour these wild districts will grow nothing but their own ferns, rushes^ 

 and heather. Then, if the same labour be not continued, the land will, 

 in a couple of seasons, revert to its original and natural herbage. 



Portions of some of the deer forests might, in the spring and summer, 

 be grazed by sheep and cattle ; but would the same rents be paid for the 

 grazing as are paid for the shooting ? 



Again, we know that, except when wonderfully well cooked, the meat 

 of a wild red deer is often not very good eating. If therefore, deer 

 cannot grow fat and become sweet venison on their highlands, sheep 

 assuredly could not there become good mutton. 



This was demonstrated forty or fifty years ago, when there was a 

 general exodus from the Highlands of the cotter and crofter tenantry. 

 Such became a necessity, for there was no other alternative for them but 

 starvation, even if the low rents they paid were to be reduced to 

 nothing. The ground occupied by these poor people had then to be let 

 run into grouse moors and deer forests. Since then it has many 

 hundreds of times been the experience of the landlord to have an 

 extensive sheep-grazing thrown upon his hands by the tenant, and by 

 the rule in Scotland, he had to take over the sheep at the market value 

 of the day. Say the landlord paid £500 for the sheep, to get interest 

 for his money, and the rent he was paid by the tenant, he should 

 make some £50 a year out of his sheep -farming, an occupation, with 

 all its worry, he would be very unlikely to undertake. As a grouse 

 moor for this sheep-walk he would get at least £100 a year rent 

 without any trouble to himself, besides being able to sell oflf the sheep 

 at the price he paid for them. 



Is it therefore to be wondered at that Scotch lairds prefer to see on 

 their properties grouse and deer to sheep and cattle ? 



The keepers and gillies now employed on the moors and forests are 

 worthy descendants of the old crofters and cottagers, but they are much 

 better off by their weekly wage and are better housed than were their 

 fathers when tenanting the place. 



Experience has taught us and history relates that to make money on 

 Highland moors or forests, by either grazing or tillage, is an impossi- 

 bility, and when such was the case in the past, there is no chance of 

 success in the future. 



There are many reasons for this, among them being the following : — 



Most of the deer forests and much of the grouse ground lie over 



