COEKOUR 



INVERNESS-SHIRE 



|HERE is no more desolate region in all 

 Scotland than that extending north- 

 wards from Kinloch-Rannoch to Loch 

 Laggan. Once it was a vast primaeval 

 forest broken only by the bare mountain 

 summits, and wherever the surface of the moor is 

 broken, bones of the departed woodland are exposed 

 to view skeletons of trees lying in inextricable 

 confusion as they fell in a long-forgotten past, 

 embedded in the all-prevailing wet peat. Many 

 theories have been propounded to explain the dis- 

 appearance of the forest, and the still more obscure 

 cause which prevents trees, when planted now, thriv- 

 ing where millions of them once occupied the 

 ground. The most probable explanation is founded 

 upon a change in meteorological conditions; a cycle 

 of centuries with moderate rainfall, favourable to 

 tree-growth, having been followed by a cycle of 

 centuries with excessive rainfall, encouraging the 

 growth of moss and sphagnum to a degree destruc- 

 tive to higher forms of vegetation, thus causing 

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