FORESTRY IN SCOTLAND IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 117 
engines and portable saw-mills; no penny post, no telegraph, 
and no telephone; few books, and no forestry periodicals; no 
Arboricultural Society, nor meetings to discuss questions of 
interest to foresters; in short, few or none of the improved 
methods and appliances were then available which we are now in 
the habit of considering as absolutely indispensable for the efficient 
performance of the duties of a forester. He might plant woods 
and grow the timber to the highest perfection, but for want of an 
easy access to a market where forest produce was in demand, the 
trees would scarcely pay him for cutting them down. If at any 
time a greater quantity was cut than met the local demand, it was 
a serious undertaking for the forester to seek for and find a good 
market for the surplus, Letters travelled slowly, and postage was 
high, and the cost of travelling from one part of the country to 
another by stage-coach, or perhaps, in outlying districts, by a 
lumbering carrier’s cart, was almost prohibitory when added to 
the loss of time, and unless the forests were so extensive as to 
induce moneyed men to embark in the timber trade, and lay con- 
venient to good water communication, their owners reaped a poor 
return from the sale of the produce. From a variety of circum- 
stances, these primitive methods were on the wane when Her 
Majesty began to reign, and at the end of sixty years, in 1897, 
they have been generally supplanted by vastly improved methods 
and facilities. 
THE VICTORIAN ERA. 
At the ascension of Queen Victoria to the throne of these 
realms, in the year 1837, a general upheaval was taking place 
among the arts and sciences. Old things were passing away, 
or fast becoming reorganised under the teachings of science and 
the beneficial influences of the spirit of inquiry and improve- 
ment that were abroad, and before half the period had passed 
during which Her Majesty has reigned, the old order had practi- 
cally disappeared, and the new ruled in its stead. The general 
use of steam power, and the consequent development of railways 
and steamboats, which were in their initiatory stages in 1837, was 
undoubtedly one of the most potent of all the influences which 
tended to the rapid advancement of all branches of rural, as well 
as of urban industries. In 1837, Wheatstone and Faraday were 
busy at the invention of the electric telegraph, which has assumed 
such a wonderful development in the course of the Queen’s reign, 
