CAUSES OF DESTRUCTION 317 



well cultivated, and of much value. At that time it was full of aged oaks : 

 And it is observed, that the timber of which all the wooden houses in 

 Edinburgh were built was taken from thence. 



In gaining her towns, Scotland lost her forests. 



INCIDENTS OF CONQUEST 



In the old days, a necessary corollary to the conquest of 

 a wooded country, where the country was to be held by the 

 invading force, was the destruction of woodland, in order 

 that the progress of the invaders should be eased and 

 that no lurking places should remain, whence remnants of 

 the defending army might sally forth upon the flanks of 

 their enemy. The earliest systematic conquest of Scotland 

 recorded in history is that of the Romans in the early 

 centuries of our era ; and tradition speaks strongly to the 

 destruction wrought by the Roman legions in the forests of 

 England and of southern Scotland. Nor is the tradition 

 without some show of archaeological support. So long ago 

 as 1701, it was noted of the buried forest of Hadfield Moss 

 in Yorkshire that 



many of those trees of all sorts have been burnt, but especially the Pitch 

 or Firr trees, some quite through, and some all on a side ; some have been 

 chopped and squared, some bored through, otherwise half riven with great 

 wooden wedges and stones in them, and broken ax-heads ; 



and again, in Lincolnshire, under hills of sand, were dis- 

 covered "roots of great Firrs or Pitch trees, with the im- 

 presses of the ax as fresh upon them as if they had been 

 cut down a few weeks." In both cases, coins of the Roman 

 emperors were found associated with the ruined forests. The 

 evidence, if not demonstrative, is suggestive ; and there can 

 be little doubt that the Romans would have adopted so 

 obvious a way of ensuring the fruits of their conquest, as the 

 levelling of great tracts of forest, especially in the dangerous 

 areas on the newly won frontiers of the Empire. 



In much later days invasions followed a similar course. 

 In describing John of Gaunt's invasion of Scotland in 1380, 

 the English historian, Knighton, says that at one and the 

 same time, it was possible to hear the sound of 80,000 axes 

 felling the timber of the woods, and that the timber so cut 

 was given as fodder to the fire. 



