SCOTTISH FORESTS IN EARLY TIMES. 9 1 



hood of their forts or camps, while the natives looked down 

 from their mountain retreats on their "ancestral trees falling 

 before the axe of the stranger," 1 receives a measure of support 

 from the evidences yielded by some of our mosses, e.g., in Lochar 

 Moss (Dumfries), in Flanders Moss, and in the Mosses of Kippen 

 and Kincardine (Menteith), where "portions of roadways composed 

 of logs of wood laid closely together and bearing the marks of 

 the axe have at various times been exposed to view," with an 

 accumulation of 5 or 6 feet of peat-moss upon these timber-ways. 2 

 These are, doubtless, the "long bridges" of which Tacitus speaks. 



Let me here say that I shall endeavour to state the case for the 

 peat-mosses further on ; in dealing with them there is a chrono- 

 logical difficulty, and it is my purpose to adhere to consecutive 

 chronology as far as possible. 



Referring to the "long bridges" it is also stated that the 

 Emperor Severus, who pushed his conquests so far north as the 

 shores of the Moray Firth (a.d. 207-8), laid down such structures 

 across the bogs and morasses. 3 He was continually harassed 

 during his campaign by the natives who carried on a guerilla 

 warfare against him, sheltering in the fastnesses of the woods and 

 bogs ; and of the 50,000 men whom he is said to have lost most 

 of them perished in clearing these great woods (the remains of 

 which still stand in Perthshire and Strathspey), and by the 

 pestilences of an uncleared country. 4 The principal trees of these 

 forests were fir, birch and oak. Skene says — "What are now 

 extensive plains, well-watered straths and rich carses must then 

 have presented the appearance of a jungle or bush of oak, birch 

 or hazel ; the higher ground rocky and barren and the lower soft 

 and marshy." 5 It is difficult to gather anything like an exact 

 picture of the state of the country at this period, as regards woods, 

 from any evidence I can find ; but I am convinced it is inaccurate 

 to say that the whole surface of the country was densely covered 

 with trees. The natives, who were evidently not sparse in numbers, 

 fought in chariots, which could only have been of use in large 



1 Stuart's Caledonia Romana, pp. 99-101. 



2 Ibid. , p. 226. 



3 Herodian, chap. iii. 



4 Hunter's Woods, Forests and Estates of Perthshire, p. 8. 



5 Celtic Scotland, I., p. 84. 



