14 TRAXSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and to question C^sar would be an offence not less heinous 

 than to speak disrespectfully of the equator. 



With the coming of the churchmen and the foundation of 

 monasteries and other ecclesiastical establishments, somewhat 

 more tangible evidence of tree-planting is forthcoming. The 

 remains of orchards, gardens and enclosures around these old 

 building-sites to-day afford visible, although indefinite, proofs 

 of planting. That trees were appreciated by the residents not 

 only for their value as timber and for utilitarian purposes, but 

 also in an aesthetic or protective sense, is shown by expressions 

 such as that used by the writer or transcriber of the Book of 

 the Dun Coiu (early Irish, about iioo), when he says : — 



" A hedge of trees surrounds me ; 

 Well do I write under the greenwood." 



Traces of old orchard trees remain to the present day at 

 such places as Melrose, Haddington, Jedburgh and Lindores 

 Abbey. At the last-named place old Pear trees still survive, or 

 survived until recently, one of them reputed to be the largest 

 of its kind in Scotland (Alexr. Laing's Lindores Abbey, 1876). 



The Chronicles, Charters, and Registers of these old founda- 

 tions, and also other records relating to land and property, 

 while frequently mentioning woodland rights and privileges, 

 such as the cutting of Oaks for timber (12), are almost entirely 

 silent on the subject of tree-planting, probably for the cogent 

 reason that no such practice was in existence, except in a 

 casual and fortuitous way. In an account of the bailiff of the 

 King's Manor of Jedworth in 12S8, the construction of ditch 

 and hedge (fosse et Jiayc) about both the wood and meadows 

 of the place named is charged for, and Cosmo Innes gives this 

 as the earliest instance known of such a fence (12). In 1473 

 the tenants of the Cistercian Abbey of Coupar-Angus were 

 bound to " put al the land to al possibil policie in biggin of 

 housis, plantacioun of tries — eschis, osaris and sauchs and 

 froit tries,^ gif thei mai"(i3). In 1510, a lease given by the 

 Crown to Patrick Murray held him bound to maintain the 

 plantations of Oak, and of all other trees necessary on certain 

 lands in Selkirkshire, where, apparently, plantations then existed. 

 Traditions such as these which assert that the old Oaks of 



^ Ashes, osiers, willows or sallows, and fruil trees. 



