194 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



can mean nothing but pit-coal, is enumerated among the 

 natural commodities of England. Some of the trans- 

 lations of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 

 rende carlo by cool or col, some by gold, and some 

 omit this line, as well as others unintelligible to the 

 translators. Hence, although Giraldus was acquainted 

 with coal, it certainly was not generally known to English 

 writers until at least a century after the time of that 

 author. 



" The earliest mediaeval notice of mineral coal I have 

 met with is in a passage cited by Ducange from a docu- 

 ment of the year 1 1 98, and it is an etymological observa- 

 tion of some interest, that carbones ferrei, as sea-coal is 

 called in the document, are said by Ducange to have been 

 known in France by the popular name of hulla, a word 

 evidently identical with the modern French houille, and 

 the Cornish Huel, which in the form wheat is .an element 

 in the name of many mining localities." 



While the forest trees may have been, and apparently 

 were, extensively devastated by man, they may have been, 

 and most probably were, to some extent destroyed also by 

 the animals preserved for the chase, though that also may 

 have unconsciously contributed to the maintenance of the 

 woods. In a foot note appended by Mr Marsh to another 

 passage in the work cited, he remarks : 



" No lover of American nature can have failed to observe 

 a marked difference between a native wood from 

 which cattle are excluded and one where they are per- 

 mitted to browse. A few seasons suffice for the total 

 extirpation of the ' underbrush,' including the young trees 

 on which alone the reproduction of the forest depends, and 

 all the branches of those of larger growth which hang 

 within reach of the cattle are stripped of their buds and 

 leaves, and soon wither and fall off. These effects are observ- 

 able at a great distance, and a wood-pasture is rocognised, 

 almost as far as it can be seen, by the regularity with 

 which its lower foliage terminates at what Ruskin some- 



