WOODLAND VEGETATION 



BY CHARLOTTE L. LAURIE, Ladies' College, Cheltenham 



CHAPTER IX 



THERE is abundant evidence that at one time Great Britain 

 was far more extensively wooded than it is now. Roman his- 

 torians speak of the forests in which the ancient Britons took 

 refuge. Tacitus, for instance, states that in A.D. 59 Agricola 

 himself reconnoitred the forests and the estuaries, and it is re- 

 corded that the Emperor Severus traversed the greater part of 

 Caledonia, hewing down forests and throwing causeways across 

 marshes. 



Besides historical, there is geological, evidence of the fact. 

 It is now generally accepted that the presence of peat moors is 

 an indication of the existence of former forests. The peat moors 

 of the Pennine range contain much buried timber, and there is 

 little doubt that primitive forests extended over almost the 

 whole of the Pennine slopes and over a considerable part of their 

 summits, the oak being the dominant tree up to a height of 1250 

 ft., and the birch from 1250 up to 1750 ft. The peat bed near 

 Sharpness on the Severn has a thickness of nearly fourteen feet, 

 and is composed mainly of oak, alder, beech, and hazel ; some 

 of the oaks found in it are of considerable size, one measuring 

 80 ft. The geological period immediately following the Great 

 Ice Age is sometimes characterised as an age of forests, the growth 

 of which must have gone on for a considerable time to accumulate 

 the depth of peat found at the mouths of rivers, such as the 

 Severn, the Tay, and the Earn. It must be remembered that 

 in that prehistoric age the elevation of the land was far higher 

 than it is at present, and the sea much farther out ; in fact, 



it is probable that part of what is now the North Sea was forest 



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