NORTH DURHAM AND BERWICKSHIRE. 321 



property, and gave birth to that enterprise which has made the 

 county " a vast garden created by human industry." 



The ancient forests are said to have been formed chiefly of oak, 

 which attained a large size ; but perhaps its abundance has been 

 overrated, for it seems to have been always guarded with care, 

 and when grants of it were made to abbots and barons, the num- 

 ber of trees are regularly specified, a caution scarcely requisite 

 had the article been common or superfluous*. The birch, alder, 

 and hazel -f- were probably the predominant species. The roan- 

 tree, the elm, the hawthorn, the bird-cherry, the holly, the 

 Guelder-rose, and three or four willows $, contributed to thicken 

 and vary the forest. All these are still to be found truly wild in 

 our most retired deans, or by the sides of rivulets, although in 

 trivial quantities, and of degenerate size. The Scotch fir, no 

 longer indigenous, formed a considerable part of the pristine 

 woods, for great abundance of its trunks have been " dug up in 

 mossy and moory bogs where they cut for turf," in many parts of 

 the north and east of England ; and I have been told that its 

 cones have been found in peat-mosses on the Lammermuirs. 

 Historians assert that the ash and beech were, in these earliest 

 times, likewise of native growth, an assertion which some natu- 

 ralists have questioned. No traces of them, it is said, occur in 

 our mosses ; yet ash-keys and beech-mast would in all probability 

 have proved as indestructible as hazel-nuts or fir-cones, which 

 are abundant. But the absence of this proof is not so conclusive 

 as might at first appear, for the trees grow by preference in such 

 situations as would make it difficult for their fruit to drop in 

 places fitted for their preservation by the astringent qualities of 

 the soil or water. Of the beech, however, there is no proof of 



* In 1347, one item of the expenditure of Holy Island Priory is, " To the Abbot 

 of Newminster, for four oak trees bought of him, 46s. 8d." a large sum in those 

 days. 



t " The part of Britain long since called Scotland, was known to the Romans 

 by the name of Caledonia, because, says Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE, the north-east 

 part of Scotland was by the natives called Cal Dun, which signifies hills of hazel, 

 with which it was covered." MURPHY'S Tacitus Notes on the Life of Agricola. 



t Salix alba, caprea, cinerea, aquatica, aurita et pentandra. 



See EVELYN'S Silva, p. 265, et seq., and the Notes by Dr HUNTKR, at p. 281. 



03 



