10 FAUNA OF SHROPSHIRE. 



expanses of land intermittently covered with water 



the long graceful boat of to-day would have been a poor 

 friend to the Goidel, or Silurian and Brython of those times, 

 who would have been sorely at fault without the dug-out 

 canoe, or hide-covered coracle, which last is still used on the 

 Severn, Wye, and Dee." Mr. F. Rawdon Smith, in a letter 

 to the author says that the whole of the more elevated parts 



/of Sijr.6psl5irfe were once densely wooded, though the only 

 remains we now, have beyond names and traditions are 



,'W^Xe'F^rek/ShirIet, Kinlet, and the Forest of Mt St. Gilbert 

 ( = Wrekin). He adds that the woods formed "one huge 

 nearly impassable timber belt, and that the lower ground 

 was swamp covered with alders, through which the Meese, 

 Sleap, Tern, Severn, etc., wandered ; that this wilderness 

 was only opened at certain places and crossed by one or two 

 roads, and the whole district was purposely preserved in this 

 state, to help to keep out the turbulent Silures and, after- 

 wards, the Welsh The major portion of 



these enormous forests was cut down for fuel for forges, 

 etc., in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and after- 

 wards." It is clear that so long as the forests remained 

 unreclaimed, and the marshy lands undrained, they would 

 afford shelter to birds and beasts, where they might live 

 secure from their greatest enemy man. Indeed, the settle- 

 ments of men in Shropshire in early times were so scattered 

 and small that the whole population was probably not one 

 twentieth of the present number. As a consequence of this 

 state of things many birds and animals then flourished which 

 we now hardly think of as being Shropshire species at all, 

 such as the Wolf, Roe-buck, and Wild Boar ; possibly, at a 

 yet earlier period, the Bear and the Beaver. The boom of 

 the Bittern would resound from the swamps, and the Kite 



