VI. i 

 SCOTTISH FORESTS IN TIMES PAST 



LONG before man made his appearance in the country, 

 Scottish forests had their vicissitudes. Even after the 

 settlements of the early Neolithic peoples had been made, 

 Nature still retained a firm grip of her own, and her strong 

 hand can be traced in the successive rise and disappearance 

 of great forest tracts, such as we can scarcely imagine at the 

 present day. A glance at these changes will supply a per- 

 spective from which later happenings can be the better 

 gauged. 



THE LOWER FOREST OF THE PEAT 



No records remain to tell, of the strange fluctuations of 

 Scottish climate and vegetation, except the scant stores of 

 insignificant debris hidden in the bottoms of ancient lakes 

 or in the depths of peat-bogs; but to the investigations of 

 a small band of workers, James Bennie, Clement Reid, and 

 especially Francis J. Lewis, these hidden treasures have 

 revealed a marvellous tale of change. 



After the great period of the Ice Age had gone, Arctic 

 plants spread from the hills to the level of the sea, but in 

 the western and northern islands these glacial immigrants 

 from the continent had scarcely obtained a foothold before 

 a warmer and drier climate ushered in the Lower Forest of 

 the Peat. Trees of Birch, Hazel and Alder found foothold 

 upon the valley floors, and gradually climbing the hillsides, 

 spread in a vast forest, here more dense, there more sparse, 

 extending from the lowland valleys to an altitude approxi- 

 mating to that of our modern woods, close on 2000 feet. 

 Even to the Hebrides and the Shetland Isles, where now 

 no trees can grow, the Lower Forest spread. In the times of 

 the Lower Forest of the Peat, man had not yet penetrated 

 to northern Britain. 



