300 FOEESTS OF GKEAT BETTArN". 



Evelyn's " Silva," tlie first edition of wMch appeared in 1664, 

 rendered an extremely important service to the cause of tlie 

 woods, and there is no doubt that the ornamental plantations in 

 which England far surpasses all other countries, are, in some 



from Anglo-Saxon charters, one published by Kemble in Codex Diplomaticus, 

 the other by Thorpe in Diplomatarium Anglicum, in all which passages it more 

 probably means peat than mineral coal. According to Way, Promptorium 

 Parrulorum, p. 506, twU, the Catliolicon Anglicanum has "A turfe grafte, 

 turbarium." Grafte is here evidently the same word as the A.-S. grmfa, 

 and the Danish T&rvegraf, a turf -pit, confirms this opinion. Coal is not men- 

 tioned in King AKred's Bede, in Neckam, in Glanville or in Robert of Glouces- 

 ter, though the two latter writers speak of the allied mineral, jet, and are very 

 full in their enumeration of the mineral productions of the island. 



In a Latin poem ascribed to Giraldus Cambrensis, who died after the year 

 1220, but found also in the manuscripts of Walter Mapes (see Camden Society 

 edition, pp. 131 and 350), and introduced into Higden's Polychronicon (Lon- 

 don, 1865, pp. 398, 399), carho sub terra, cortice, which can mean nothing but 

 pit-coal, is enumerated among the natural commodities of England. Some of 

 the translations of the 13th and 14th centuries render carbo by cool or col, some 

 by gold, and some omit this line, as well as others unintelligible to the trans- 

 lators. Hence, although Giraldus was acquainted with coal, it certainly was 

 not generally known to English writers \mtil at least a century after the time 

 of that author. 



Vegetius and Dion Cassius speak of jars of burning coal and brimstone as 

 missiles employed in naval combats and other battles, but there is no reason 

 to suppose that the coal referred to by them was other than charcoal. The 

 'Eongs-skugg-sio Soros, 1768, page 391, enumerates, among like mhsWes, jardJcol 

 oh brennusteinn, er haufot-vapn, pessara allra, er nu Jiefi eh nefnt : TSAUTU-coal 

 and brimstone are the most effective of these missiles. Earth-coal must of course 

 mean mineral coal, but I know no other evidence that mineral coal was known 

 to the Northmen so early as the 12th century, to which the Hongs-skugg-sio 

 belongs. The new edition, Munich, 1881, has simply kol and brennusteinn, 

 which is most likely the true reading, and the passage is probably taken from 

 the ancient writers above referred to. 



The earliest mediaeval notice of mineral coal I have met with is in a passage 

 cited by Ducange from a document of the year 1198, and it is an etymological 

 observation of some interest, that carbones ferrei, as sea-coal is called in the 

 document, are said by Ducange to have been known in France by the popular 

 name of hulla, a word evidently identical with the modern French houille and 

 the Cornish Huel, which in the form wheal is an element in the name of many 

 mining localities. 



England was anciently remarkable for its forests, but Caesar says it wanted 

 the fagus and the abies. — B. G. V. 13. The late lamented Professor Rolleston, 

 in a very interesting and instructive lecture on the influence of man in modi- 

 fying the external aspects of nature, delivered before the Royal Geographical 

 Society, observes that the Latin prceter may mean besides as well as except, andi 



