The book Arran; - Cook Clan

THE FIRST OF THE IMPROVERS 189
some hopes of their emigration, which to his sorrow, is now
like to vanish, and as to the latter he refers to his last journal
if man could do more to reduce their numbers.
' That the people are naturally healthy, lazy, and robust,
yet from experience he finds that had he time to attend them,
he would not be afraid in a short time to turn out 500 as
good workmen as are in Scotland ;
it 's therefore a pity they
were not both taught and employed within the island.'^
' What promotes their laziness is their possession of
about 49,173 acres in common, and it is his opinion, founded
on facts, that the poor people called tenants, who actually
pays the whole rent to his Grace, does not possess i of the
common pasture, the other half being eat up by the cattle
belonging to the young fellows, who sorn upon the old people
throughout the whole of their time, except the times they
are either catching herrings or smuggling.'
A brief word on the big subject of game. At the close
of the seventeenth century there were about four hundred
deer in the island carefully preserved for sport, and any
tenant killing one without licence was liable to a fine of £20
Scots. They were under charge of the forester, and when
he thought them too numerous he granted licences for killing
a certain number on the condition that he had the skins.^
Blackcock, too, was forbidden sport. In 1778 it is observed
that ' the stags, which used to abound, are now reduced to
a dozen.' ^
Nevertheless, circumstances seem not to have favoured
the thriving of deer. Within a quarter of a century it can
be said that the red deer ' are either wholly, or nearly, extirpated,'
lacking, it is suggested, proper covert from ' the
improvident destruction of the woods.' A few might still
' ' The inhabitants in general are sober, religious and industrious . . . excepting
at new-year's day, at marriages, or at the two or three fairs in the island, they have no
leisure for any amusement : no wonder then at their depression of spirits.'—Pennant's
Tour, edit. 1774, p. 177. Cf. further extract from Aiton's Surt