98 SCOTTISH FORESTS IN EARLY TIMES. 



hurricane blew down in a single hour 4000 full-grown trees on the 

 Hill of Cromarty, and Hugh Miller 1 , looking on the scene of 

 destruction — the masses of fallen timber cumbering the ground, 

 and the moisture and water gathering and settling there — was 

 struck by the thought that in this scene he had the origin of full 

 one half of our Scottish mosses exemplified. " Some," he says, 

 " of the mosses of the South date from the time of the Roman 

 invasion. . . . Some . . are of still more modern origin ; 

 there exist Scottish mosses that seem to have been formed when 

 Robert the Bruce felled the woods and wasted the country of 

 John of Lorn. But of the others not a few have palpably owed 

 their origin to violent hurricanes." 



Let me further draw upon our Scottish mosses for detailed 

 illustrations of the extent of our ancient woodlands, always 

 bearing in mind the chronological difficulty I have mentioned, 

 and also premising that my illustrations are casual, gathered by 

 the way, as it were, and make no pretence to deal fully with 

 this branch of the subject. 



Five miles from Carrbridge, on the new railway line between 

 Aviemore and Inverness, at the summit level (alt. 1323 feet) is an 

 extensive cutting where a great bed of moss was encountered, in 

 which, at the depth of 25 feet, three successive crops of fir could 

 be traced, each buried three feet under the other. At the present 

 day no trees seem to be able to grow here. " In many parts of 

 Strathspey, now bleak and bare, labourers in the course of 

 excavations have turned up trunks of trees, enormous in their 

 dimensions, from the moss, where they had lain for centuries." 2 

 "At Ardross, Rosskeen, large logs of bog-oak are turned up in 

 peat-cutting, a piece of which, sent to the Forestry Exhibition in 

 Edinburgh in 1884, was awarded a certificate." 3 Near Cromarty 

 Hugh Miller found in one place the decaying remains of huge 

 oaks, cups of acorns, handfuls of hazel-nuts, twigs of birch, and 

 even leaves of these three species preserved in layers of a sort of 

 unctuous clay." 1 Under the shallow waters of Burghead Bay, 

 rooted in a muddy, peaty soil, are to be seen the roots and boles 



1 My Schools and Schoolmasters, p. 465. 



2 Nairne's Notes, p. 23. 



3 Trans. Gaelic Society Inverness, XII., p. 335 ; R. MacLean. 



4 My Schools and Schoolmasters, p. 70. 



