l8o TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



years later James VI. and I. saw in brick the salvation of 

 timber.i The extension of the demand for fuel caused by the 

 growing industrialisation of the country, and the expanding 

 household demand of an increasing population, gave rise to 

 periodical panics, and there were many prophecies of an 

 imminent timber famine. Few observed the process by which 

 industry and domestic consumers were ceaselessly adapting 

 themselves to other fuels, a process made possible no less by 

 changes in architecture and equipment than by a growing 

 insensibility to the worst feature of the modern city. Coal 

 gradually came into general use for industrial purposes,- and 

 many attempts were made to solve the problem of using it to smelt 

 iron : ^ the objection to coal for culinary and domestic purposes, 

 however, long continued.^ It was left to Sir William Petty to scoff 

 at all apprehensions of any serious timber shortage, and to support 

 his case by arguments to which any reply seemed impossible.^ 



Iron smelting had been pursued in England from a remote 

 antiquity, and by the fifteenth century had assumed considerable 

 dimensions : " the expansion in the following century, however, 

 altered the whole aspect of the industry. The consumption of 

 fuel was very great ; " but coal could be used, and was indeed 

 to be preferred, for working the iron once the ore had been 



' Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, Nos. loil, II 14, 1 1 15, 1 1 17, I167; 

 Cunningham, op. cit., ii. 316, n. i. 



- By 1578 it was the principal fuel used by London brewers, who offered 

 to burn no more sea-coal but wood only in those brewhouses nearest the 

 palace of Westminster : Cal. State Papers (Domestic), 1547-80, p. 612. 



•'' Sturtevant and Dud Dudley are well known : there were others who also 

 attempted to discover the process. Plattes, A Discovery of Infinite Treasure 

 (1639), p. 9 : "I finde by experience, that all attempts to make iron with Sea- 

 coale or other coales, are vanitie." Cunningham, op. cit., ii. 65. 



^Harrison, op. cit., p. 202. Standish, New Directions, p. 34: "forty 

 yeares agoe. when the poorest sort scorned to eate a peece of meate roasted 

 with sea-cole, which now the best Magistrates are constrained to doe.*' 

 Edmond Howes, writing in 1612 {Stow's Annates, p. 210), declared that 

 " Sea-cole, and pitt-coale is become the generall fuell of this Eritaine Island, 

 vsed in the houses of the nobilitie, cleargy, and gentrie, in London and in 

 all the other cityes, and Shires of this kingdome, as well for dressing of meate, 

 washing, brewing, dyeing as otherwise " : but later evidence suggests that 

 this is an exaggeration. 



■^ Political Arithmetic in Economic Writings, pp. 243, 294. 



" Salzman, op. cit., pp. 20 ff. 



"i Ibid., pp. 36-7. 



