316 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST 



receiving stones as alms. This stone, whether by reason of sulphurous or 

 some fatter matter which it contains, is burned instead of wood, of which 

 the country is destitute. 



Indeed the mining of coal in Britain seems to have 

 been almost confined to Scotland in the sixteenth century ; 

 for according to Hector Boece : 



In Fyffe ar won blak stanis, quhilk hes sa intollerable heit, quhen thay ar 

 kindillit, that they resolve and meltis irne, and ar thairfore richt proffitable 

 for operation of smithis. This kind of blak stanis ar won in na part of 

 Albion bot allanerlie betwix Tay and Tyne. 



HOUSEBUILDING 



Second only to the use of wood for fire, was the 

 use of timber in the making of shelters for the comfort of 

 human occupants. In one of the earliest known sites of 

 occupation in Scotland, the Azilian settlement of Oronsay, 

 Mr Henderson Bishop found, deeply sunk in the sand, holes 

 which could only have contained strong upright posts for 

 the support of a superficial structure ; and the investigations 

 of Dr J. N. Marshall and Mr Ludovic Mann at the much 

 later vitrified fort of Dunagoil in Bute leave no room for 

 doubt that the dwellers there inhabited well-built huts roofed 

 and perhaps walled with wattle plastered over with clay. 

 Mr A. O. Curie has found similar evidence of the use 

 of wattle huts at Traprain in Haddingtonshire. As the 

 centuries passed and men congregated in towns, the call 

 for timber for the erection of houses increased manifold. 

 Even in 1666, at the time of the Great Fire, London was 

 largely built of wood, and timbered houses were character- 

 istic of Edinburgh at a still later date. So great was the 

 demand for building oak, that large supplies had to be im- 

 ported from abroad, and when, in the reign of Queen Mary, 

 Denmark prohibited the sale of oak to Scottish traders, the 

 embargo, according to Professor Hume Brown, threatened 

 to put an end to housebuilding in Scotland. The influence 

 of timber-built towns and villages upon Scottish forests can 

 well be imagined one example of its actual working will 

 suffice to point the argument. In 1792 the Rev. Thomas 

 White, in an Account of the Parish of Liberton, wrote : * - 



The Burrow Moor [of Edinburgh] where the scenes just mentioned [the 

 scrimmage or "Battle" of Lousie Law in 1571] happened, is at present 



