Jan. 1901.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBUEGH 19 



It is dying out in this locality, although the surroundings 

 are apparently unchanged. There is evidence of a similar 

 decrease in other places, as quoted by Mr. G. Claridge 

 Druce in his "Contributions towards a Flora of West Eoss," 

 in the Transactions of this Society for 1894, where he 

 refers to the species as follows, in quoting the experience 

 of Dixon at Gairloch : — " The Epipactis ensifolia," says 

 Dixon, " formerly abundant, is now almost unknown. In 

 June 1883, I discovered one plant on a stony bank by 

 water. In 1885 two plants were at the same place." 

 This rapid decrease without apparent cause has been noted 

 by botanists in the case of other plants ; and if the facts 

 of such decrease are real, the causes can only be ascertained 

 when the relation of the plants to their surrounings are 

 better known. 



From the botanists and various travellers during the 

 eighteenth century, we learn of the presence of natural 

 woods in various parts of the West Highlands where none 

 now exist. On the islands there does not appear to have 

 been much more than copses, but on the mainland several 

 places were occupied with large oak woods. The extinction 

 of the copses on the islands seems to have been mainly 

 brought about for the sake of fuel, and for improving 

 cultivation and pasture. In addition to these causes, the 

 large woods on the mainland were destroyed in order to 

 make charcoal for smelting purposes. Woods were not 

 enclosed, so that cattle had free access to them. The effect 

 of this on certain trees, such as the hazel, is to exterminate 

 them after having been once cut down, as the young shoots 

 are greedily eaten, and the plants soon die. With birch 

 this does not occur to quite the same extent, as the shoots 

 are seldom so closely eaten down. On geological formations 

 with a better class of soil, woods and copses have been in 

 many places destroyed, with the idea of improving the 

 pasture, since the introduction of sheep farms during the 

 latter part of the eighteenth century. The effects of the 

 distribution of these woods on the flora of the country has 

 probably been more of a local than of any general nature, 

 as the wooiis were not of sufficient extent to influence the 

 climate. It must be remembered that the remains of former 

 large woods in peat mosses, so general on the mainland and 



