Mr P. F. Tytler on the Ancient Forcats of' Scotland. 107 



remains of these primitive woods, have been and are still discov- 

 ered, buried deep under the surface, in almost every moor in 

 Scotland. Such, indeed, was, at an early period, the extent 

 and impervious nature of these woods, that the English, in their 

 invasions, endeavoured to clear the country by fire and by the 

 hatchet ; and Knighton relates, that in an expedition of the Duke 

 of Lancaster into this country, in the reign of Richard the Se- 

 cond, this prince, having recourse to these methods, employed 

 in the work of destruction so vast a multitude, that the stroke 

 of eighty thousand hatchets might be heard resounding through 

 the forests, whilst the fire was blazing and consuming them at 

 the same moment. So utterly erroneous is the opinion of one of 

 those conjectural historians, who pronounces that there is little 

 reason lo think that in any age, of which an accurate remem- 

 brance is preserved, this kingdom was ever more woody than it 

 is now. 



In the fourteenth century, however, many districts in the 

 midst of these forests had been cleared of the wood, and brought 

 under cultivation. Thus, in the Forest of Plater, in the county 

 of Forfar, David the Second, in 1366, made a grant of four ox- 

 gangs of arable land for a reddendo of a pair of white gloves, 

 or two silver pennies, to Murdoch del Rhynd. In the same 

 forest, the monks of Restennet, at the death of Alexander the 

 Third, enjoyed the tenth of the hay made in its meadows; and 

 in 1362, the king permitted John Hay of TuUyboll, to bring 

 into cultivation, and appropriate the whole district lying between 

 the river Spey and the burn of Tynot, in the Forest of Awne. 

 From these facts it may be inferred,'that the same process of clear- 

 ing away the wood, and reducing large districts of the forests into 

 fields and meadow lands, had been generally pursued throughout 

 the country. It was a work, in some measure, both of peril and 

 necessity ; for savage animals abounded as much in Scotland as 

 in the other uncleared and wooded regions of northern Europe ; 

 and the bear, the wolf, the wild boar, and the bison, to the hus- 

 bandmen and cultivators of those rude ages, must have been 

 enemies of a very destructive and formidable nature.* 



• Tlie Brown Bear (Ursus arclos) ai>pears to have been extirpated in tlio 

 12tli or ISlli centuries. Tlic Wolf existed till towards the close of the 17th 

 century, there being on record an authentic account of the killing of one in 



