164 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



being an established one in the sixteenth century (32, ii. 

 PP- 373) 499) 544) • t)ut it is remarkable that the shortage of 

 timber was almost certainly felt earlier in Scotland than in 

 England. The resources of the Highlands were, at any rate 

 for the most part, unavailable. The Lowlands were in fact far 

 more removed economically and socially from the Highlands 

 than from the southern kingdom : the terms in which the 

 discovery of timber in the Highlands was hailed so late as 1609 

 might have been used with equal propriety of a discovery of 

 some precious commodity in the New World (32, iv. p. 408 : 

 " Forsamekle as it hes pleasit god to discover . . . certane 

 wodis in the heylandis," etc.). While we must guard against 

 exaggerating the actual denudation of the country in the 

 fifteenth century, and statutes are not always the best of 

 evidence of economic conditions (cf. i, p. 312), there appears 

 to be no doubt that in the south of Scotland the timber shortage 

 was acute, although it might be hyperbolical to say, as indeed 

 was said with authority, " The wod of Scotland is uterlie 

 distroyit " (32, ii. 251). Despite the statute of 1457 which 

 required tenants to plant woods and trees (32, ii. 51), and that 

 of 1503 which increased the penalty for felling or burning timber 

 (32, ii. 251), nothing effective was done and the country 

 remained as deficient in woodlands as ever, a wonder to the 

 foreign traveller who came visiting the more settled parts of the 

 country, as for example, Sir Anthony Welldon (31, pp. 96 ff.). Not 

 perhaps to every traveller, for Nicander Nucius of Corcyra, who 

 visited England and Scotland (the latter as an enemy) in 1545-6,^ 

 apparently noticed no difference between the two countries. 

 "The whole island," he says, "is diversified with fruitful hills 

 and plains, and abounds with marshes and well-timbered oak- 

 forests : it has, moreover, woods and lakes near the sea " 

 (33, p. 18). The last not very intelligible reference spoils in 

 some measure the rest of the picture ; but this traveller from 

 the isles of Greece is worth quoting because, however banal his 

 descriptions of the scenes he visited, it does enforce the truth 

 that due allowance must be given to the point of view of the 

 witness whose evidence is under examination. 



To other foreign eyes, England in the fifteenth century was 

 no longer well wooded. The Debat des Heraulx states the 



^ In an account of operaiions in 1544 the Scots are stated to have fled into 

 the woods about Jedburgh (34, p. 49). 



