SCOTTISH FORESTS IX TIMES PAST 313 



The part next England is the hart and best of the realme; theirin is plenty 

 of fyshe and flesh, and snell ale, except Leth [Leith] ale,... the other parte 

 of Scotland is a baryn and a waste country full of mores. 



And it seems to me that the other travellers were equally in 

 error in generalizing from impressions gained in the centres 

 of population and industry. In proof of the great ignorance 

 of the Highlands which prevailed even amongst the elect of 

 Scotland I need do no more than cite the joy of the Par- 

 liament sitting in Edinburgh in 1609, at "the discovery of 

 woods in the Highlands which, by reason of the savageness 

 of the inhabitants, had been unknown, or at least unused." 



It is fair to assume, therefore, that the plaints of Par- 

 liament "how Woods, Parks, and all sort of Planting and 

 haning decayes within this Realme" (1607), refer mainly to 

 the familiar country, roughly to the south of the line of the 

 Forth and Clyde estuaries. 



Here certainly the nation was in straits for timber. 

 Ettrick Forest, which actually gave the name :> Forrest- 

 shire " to a great stretch of country "south from Tweeddale," 

 was "dissolved from the Crown to be set in few 1 " in 1587; 

 and King James VI, when he made the wise proposal to 

 his Privy Council that, in order to conserve timber for home 

 uses, exports of Scottish timber should be totally prohibited, 

 had to be reminded that within the memory of man no 

 timber had ever been exported from Scotland. 



A generous reading between the lines of the law, seems 

 to me to indicate that the drastic steps taken by the Par- 

 liaments of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 

 were due, not so much to the absolute lack of woods, as to 

 the great and increasing importance of timber on account of 

 the national uses to which it was put, and to the difficulty of 

 finding sufficient supplies to meet the constant demand. 

 Statutes of the latter half of the seventeenth century, 

 mention by name at least thirty different forests in Scotland; 

 and it is a pleasure to turn to Gilpin's cheerful account of 

 Scottish forest scenery at the end of the eighteenth century, 

 and to his appreciation of the natural pine and birch woods 

 of the north, of the oak mixing " its cheerful verdure with 

 the dark green tint of the pine " in the county of Stirling, of 

 the " great quantity of very fine timber " in the woods of 



1 Feu. 



