8o Rarer Woodland Plants of Scotland. [Sess. 



Whatever may have been, there is no doubt that now the 

 presence of the forest has left its impress on these plants. 

 They revel in the shade and moisture secured for them, and it 

 may be correctly surmised that if these plants find so much 

 there to aid their growth and increase, they are not likely to 

 be found far from the vicinity of its trees, although dwarf 

 shrubs or rocks may at times replace arboreal vegetation. In 

 this connection another point arises. The cessation of the 

 forest is quite likely to bring about the extermination of its 

 lowly undergrowth. The sudden felling of the trees which 

 takes place where the " clear cutting " is practised, or the same 

 result ensuing from wind, may kill the delicate undergrowth 

 that is unable, after years of forest adaptation, to withstand 

 the altered conditions which will then prevail. This alteration 

 is in several directions, — the drying up and disappearance of 

 the humus, the reduction or increased variation in the supply 

 of moisture, both of soil and atmosphere, and the usurping of 

 the ground by stronger plants formerly kept in abeyance by 

 the forest's shade. All tend to bring to an end the existence 

 of these rarer plants. They live with the forest, and it has 

 been substantiated in several instances that they die with the 

 forest. 



Coniferous woods are not, and never have been, peculiar to 

 Scotland : at present they are not extensive here, and are 

 in a much-broken-up state. Large communities of coniferous 

 trees, accompanied by their undergrowths, cover great tracts of 

 Scandinavia. From hence they extend south and east, ascend- 

 ing the mountains as the Mediterranean is approached. Cross- 

 ing Asia, they reappear in the northern countries of the great 

 western continent, slightly varied in form, and farther south 

 our native carpets are accompanied or supplanted by several 

 genera unknown to European forests, such as Chiogenes, 

 Mitchellia, and Pyxidanthera (the favourite " pine-barren 

 beauty "). 



The decay of pine-forests, and their conversion to moor 

 or heath, is economically bad. The longer, too, the moor re- 

 mains a moor, the greater difficulty of making it again a 

 forest. A large portion of the moorland of Scotland was once 

 wooded, the trees being felled and cleared because of their 

 accessibility over those on mountain slopes. In several local- 



