ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 59 
of Malcolm Canmore, who died in the year 1093. 
And there is no good reason to believe that 
writing was practised at a much earlier period in 
the country. The scanty notices of partially- 
informed foreigners, or the still more fallacious 
native traditions, are therefore our only guides 
to the civil history of the earlier period.’ And 
with regard to ‘laws for which no authority 
exists so old as the reign of Robert I.’ (1306- 
1329), it remarks that ‘most of the later 
manuscript compilations have a large collection 
of laws under the title of Leges Forestarum. But 
these are always of a most miscellaneous descrip- 
tion, and contain only a few that are properly 
forest laws and regulations. All of that descrip- 
tion are here given. They are for the most part 
chapters of well-known English statutes, and it 
may be thought their chief value here, to show 
how readily the Scotch lawyers, even of a later 
age, adopted the provisions of the English 
legislature, while nevertheless they preferred 
pecuniary penalties and mitigated the savage 
spirit of the forest law of England.’ 
Sir John Skene, in his Regiam Majestatem : 
The Auld Lawes and Constitutions of Scotland, 
