THE ELM. 99 



counties of Sutherland and Caithness, the Orkney 

 and Shetland Isles, and even in Iceland itself. The 

 latitude has not altered since the trees which are 

 found in the peat-bogs of those regions were green 

 and flourishing upon the surface ; and if the soil and 

 the climate have been deteriorated, it must have been 

 by exposure to the damp and bleaching winds. Those 

 winds, as has been said, prove fatal to young trees; 

 but it is probable that, if grown timber, of the more 

 hardy sorts, could be introduced as a shelter, the 

 land would recover its former fertility, and the land- 

 scape its ancient beauty. 



The observations of philosophical travellers and 

 inquirers, with regard to the whole of the northern 

 countries of the world, whether in the eastern conti- 

 nent or the western, confirm these remarks. Sir 

 Hans Sloane, in his account of the bogs of Ireland, 

 mentions that a great part of those districts which 

 are now covered by that unprofitable substance, must 

 have been once clothed with forests of trees. Broke, 

 in his " Winter in Lapland and Sweden," notices 

 the same change as having taken place in the north 

 of Lapland and the islands. Sir George Mackenzie 

 and others observe the same as being the case in Ice- 

 land ; and Hearne mentions that large tracts of the 

 northern parts of America, which at his visit were 

 covered with moss and swamp, were forests in the 

 days of the fathers of the Indians then living. In 

 many parts of the Highlands and western islands of 

 Scotland, where there is now hardly a tree, or, at 

 most, only coppice, along the shores of the lochs, 

 (arms of the sea,) there are found not only the trunks 

 and roots of trees in the soil of the bogs, but the 

 roots of oaks of large dimensions standing on the 

 surface; nor can the period at which they were 

 growing have been very remote, for, in some of the 

 wild and almost inaccessible glens (especially in the 



