SCOTTISH FORESTS IN EARLY TIMES. 97 



over these fallen trees, 1 there can be no doubt that they flourished 

 and fell long before the coming of the Romans — are pre-historic. 

 We are carried still further back by the mosses and sunk forests 

 of these now treeless regions — Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, 

 Sutherland and the Hebrides, where many fallen and buried trees 

 of good size have been brought to light where no natural wood of 

 any consequence can now raise its head. According to Professor 

 James Geikie the woodland days of these regions were so far back 

 as that time when " to have permitted this strong forest growth 

 we are compelled to admit a former elevation of the land and a 

 corresponding retreat of the ocean." That is, as I understand it, 

 that since the neolithic age these districts have been all but 

 treeless, as they are still. With a subsidence of the land came a 

 change of climate, and the consequent disappearance of these 

 ancient forests, and the increase of bogs and peat-mosses, may be 

 looked upon as the effect, not the cause, of this altered climate. 

 Latitudes which then were characterised by luxuriance of growth, 

 now bear but a sparse vegetation. As an illustration, let me 

 repeat that at Croy, Inverness-shire, an old and extensive forest of 

 oak, birch, fir and hazel, has been found — converted into moss, 

 in some places upwards of 20 feet deep. In the moss there, 400 

 feet above sea-level, oaks of extraordinary size were dug up, some 

 measuring from 50 to 60 feet in length and proportionally thick, 

 and even at 800 feet large blocks of fir were found where now the 

 dwarf-willow can scarcely stand. 2 Further south, at Dalserf and at 

 East Kilbride, large oaks, over 60 feet length in trunk, have been 

 got in mosses about 500 feet above sea-level, where no large oak 

 would now grow. 3 Such facts carry the age of some mosses rather 

 far back for chronological written history, and other facts bring 

 their history down to recent years. Thus it is said that : — "About 

 the middle of the 17th century on Loch Broom, Ross-shire, 

 over the site of a decayed forest, peat was dug in less than 50 

 years. In 1756 the whole Wood of Drumlanrig, Dumfriesshire, 

 was blown down and experienced a similar fate." 4 In 1830 a 



1 Memoirs of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, pp. 3 10- 1. 



2 New Statistical Account of Scotland, XIV., p. 449. 



3 Munro's Scottish Lake-Dwellings, p. 265. 



4 A. Geikie's Scenery of Scotland, p. 390, 2nd Ed. Cf. Trans. Inverness 



Scientific Society, III., p. 198 : — " In Ross-shire in 48 years a tract of 

 fine forest gave place to a moss in which fuel was cut." 



