VI. 2 



CAUSES OF THE DESTRUCTION OF 

 THE FOREST 



How came it that the fine forests of Scotland decayed 

 so completely ? Nature, we have seen, with changing 

 climes and conditions played her part, but man must 

 bear the heavier share of the guilt of destruction. A short 

 study of the immediate causes of the destruction of the forest 

 will show how deeply his ways of life and the advances of 

 his civilization bit into the woodland. 



THE NEEDS OF THE HOUSEHOLD FUEL 



In point of time the earliest uses to which the woods 

 were put were those of the household, and of these one of the 

 first was fire. Excavations of prehistoric settlements almost 

 invariably reveal the presence of hearth-stones blackened 

 and burnt by fire, for fire was essential even where a cave 

 sufficed for a habitation. It is true that dried seaweeds were 

 occasionally used for fuel, and that the dung of cattle con- 

 tinued to be so used even to comparatively recent times in 

 the outlying islands, but the staple fuel was the brushwood 

 and timber of the forest. The destruction of timber on this 

 account must have been great, for wood continued to be the 

 chief fuel through many thousands of years, since, although 

 peat and turves were used to some extent in King David's 

 reign in the twelfth century, the use of coal, first mentioned 

 in a charter of 1291, only became general under the compul- 

 sion of lack of firewood. 



Even when Continental nations still had wood in abund- 

 ance, the people of Scotland were compelled to burn these 

 curious black stones to the amazement of Pope Pius II, 

 who, following upon a visit to James I in the fifteenth 

 century, wrote 



In this country [of Scotland] I saw the poor, who almost in a state of 

 nakedness begged at the church doors, depart with joy on their faces on 



