Expenses of Legal Transfers.

(From a list of Purchasers' expenses prepared by the conveyancer to the Commission for Registration of Titles.)

Average cost of transfer 2½ percent,, and the Stamp Duty ½ per cent., makes it 3 per cent. Imagine this on any other commodity than land.

Deer Forests.

In Scotland much more than 2,000,000 acres have been depopulated and cleared of thousands of sheep to make room for deer forests: homes, farms, and food destroyed, that wealth may sport. There are now in

Well may Professor Blackie remark that "we have made Laws enough to preserve the Landlords and the Game, and it might seem wise now to make a few laws to preserve the people."

According to the British AImanac for 1885, the total area of the four counties of Scotland which are Highland counties par excellence, and in which are situated the chief deer forests of the country, extends to 8,030,190 acres; the extent of land under cultivation being only 419.385 acres, there is thus left for deer and other wild animals an enormous tract of country, much of it, of course, unfit for life of any kind, inaccessible mountains and rocky promontories upon which nothing can live.

The exact rental yielded by deer forests is not known, but estimates founded on the assessments for taxation, which have been made, place the rent at about 2s. per acre, which would yield a total sum of about £216,000 per annum. More than sixty of the Scottish deer forests are let, or retained by the owners, at rents ranging from £1,000 to £4,000 sterling; there is one gentleman, however, who pays for the land he has leased as a forest in two or three of the Scottish counties considerably more than £8,000 per annum!

The tenants of these vast stretches of land obtain nothing in return for the large amounts paid but the privilege of shooting the deer and such other wild animals as they may be able to find on their ground, and it has been calculated by economists that each stag slain is killed at a cost of not less than fifty guineas, whilst the price of a brace of grouse to the lessee of a moor has been reckoned at a pound. These are "fancy" figures, of course, and must be taken for what they are worth, as plenty of miscellaneous game is found in some of the forests which helps to furnish the table; but by rule of thumb it is assumed that any deer forest which is capable of yielding a hundred stags per annum is worth from £4,000 to £5,000 a year. Mr. J. G. Bertram has estimated that in the ten counties above named, 4,377 stags will be expected yearly, and this at £50 apiece would represent a rent-roll of £230,000. But some 50,000 to 60,000 hinds are also kept, and the contingent expenditure for servants, watchers, gillies, &c., is at least equal to the sum paid in rent. The protection of all trees from the deer, the erection of shooting lodges, &c., building of dykes, fences, &c., and various forms of "improvements" in connection with the Highland shootings and stalkings, are estimated to have cost £5,000,000.

Home and Foreign Agricultural Produce.

The Dangers of Foreign Food Supply.