SOME REMARKS ON BRITISH FOREST HISTORY. 159 



cutting down timber without disposing of it in some way, that 

 firing is an uncertain method of destruction, and that forests 

 will spring up again unless their growth is checked by the 

 plough, or grazing, or some alteration in soil conditions. ^ 



Upon a settled and civilised Romano-British people descended 

 the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes from the east, the Scots from the 

 west, the Picts from the north, and when finally the light of 

 history is cast once more upon this island, the barbaric Teutonic 

 invaders are in possession of the south-east of Britain, from the 

 Firth of Forth to the English Channel, and the culture of the 

 rest of Britain is in ruins. It is doubtless easy to exaggerate 

 the difference between the civilisation of the Roman-Briton and 

 the Saxon, Angle, or Jute who took his place or became his lord, 

 but the difference was substantial, and there can be little doubt 

 that the change from Roman order — imperfect as that may have 

 been in the fourth, and still more in the fifth century — to the 

 state of constant war waged by the invaders against the Britons 

 and between themselves was a change very much the worse 

 for agriculture and industry. It is possible that cultivated land 

 lapsed into waste and woodland : certainly mines were closed and 

 forgotten, not to be reopened for many a long year (4, 21 b, c). 

 It seems an inevitable consequence that for a period the 

 population dwindled : it can have recovered but slowly. We 

 may doubt whether it was larger at the conquest of the Norman 

 than at the coming of the Anglo Saxon. The populous 

 character of the country was remarked by Caesar (2, v. 12, J^ 3): 

 " Hominum est infinita multitude." And as Haverfield (5, p. 26) 

 says within the Romanised area " were towns and villages and 

 country-houses and farms, a large population, and a developed 

 and orderly life." 



These considerations have an important bearing upon forest 

 history, for in the light of them we must question the easy 

 assumption that the wooded area declined between the fifth 

 and the eleventh centuries. We may concede at once that 

 during a period longer than from this present year to the 

 beginning of the Wars of the Roses, woods were felled and 

 wastes cleared at certain times and in certain places : but we 

 must assume the reverse process to have been in operation 

 also. What mediaeval warfare might mean in the way of 



^ See I, pp. 308 ff. Dr Ritchie seems, however, to be willing to admit 

 too great an influence to felling and burning by troops, pp. 317, 318. 



