328 SYLVA 



decay which has taken place in these islands, is 

 that of the forests, more especially the pine forests. 

 It has been said that these have been cut down, 

 or set on fire by invading armies, or gradually con- 

 sumed by the workman's axe in times of peace. 

 But though reasons such as these satisfy those 

 persons who wish for nothing further than to have 

 something to say upon a subject, they cannot 

 satisfy the attentive observer of nature. Those 

 decays of the forests have taken place in situations 

 where no invading army ever was or could come. 

 Then as for the conflagration it would be a power- 

 ful flame that could reach from Caithness to Ork- 

 ney, or from Skye to the Long Island; nor would 

 it be an ordinary fire that would burn across the 

 summit of a lofty ridge, and down the other side, 

 especially when, as must have been the case when 

 the hill- sides of Scotland were close forests and 

 the bottoms pools of water, the summit of that 

 ridge was clad with perpetual snow. Besides, if 

 the trees had been burnt, the charcoal would have 

 been found, for charcoal is one of the most indis- 

 tructible of substances. The charcoal of the fires 

 at the signal-posts already alluded to, remains in 

 great quantity indeed, it is that which most 

 simply and effectually confounds those who will 

 have it that these trifling fusions of stone by 

 common fires and wood ashes at the surface are 

 volcanic operations that have long ago taken place 

 in the bowels of the earth ; and if the ashes of a 

 few billets fetched from its skirts have remained, 

 it would be passing strange that the charcoal of 

 the whole Sylva Caledonia, the conflagration of 

 which, if it happened, must have been more recent, 

 should be entirely lost. 



