26o THE DEER FORESTS OF SCOTLAND. 



and from it the hill rises in a constant steepness for 

 more than a mile in ascent. 



" This little plain was at that tine all covered over 

 with a firm standing wood, which was so very old that 

 not only the trees had no green leaves, but the bark 

 was totally thrown off; which the old countryman, 

 who was in my company, told me was the universal 

 manner in which fir woods did terminate, and that in 

 twenty or thirty years after the trees would ordinarily 

 cast themselves up from the root, and that they would 

 lie in heaps till the people would cut them and carry 

 them away. They likewise did let me see that the 

 outside of these standing white trees, and for the 

 space of one inch inwards, was dead white timber, but 

 what was within that was good solid timber to the 

 very pith, and as full of rozin as it could stand in the 

 wood. Some fifteen years after I had occasion to 

 come the same way, and called to mind the old woods 

 which I had seen. Then there was not so much as 

 a tree, or appearance of the root of any kind, but in 

 the place thereof, the whole bounds where the wood 



