CAUSES OF DESTRUCTION 325 



a hundred acres. Their numbers were such as to show that 

 here a dense forest once stood. But the trees were levelled ; 

 some were broken off short across the trunk, leaving an 

 upright stump, others were completely overthrown, roots 

 and all. These were no accidents of the natural decay of a 

 forest, for the trees lay uniformly in one direction, their 

 heads towards the east. So a simple reading of the buried 

 pine forest of Coldstone tells that a mighty west wind laid 

 the woodland low, and at a period, as other evidences show, 

 long after man had made his first settlements in Scotland. 



As to the evidence of fire in Scottish woodland, I can- 

 not do better than quote a comment of Sir Thomas Dick 

 Lauder in his edition of Gilpin's Remarks on Forest Scenery: 



The trees which are found in the Scottish mosses, and particularly the 

 pines which are found in those of the northern parts of Scotland, all in- 

 variably exhibit marks of fire, as indeed do the stocks from which they 

 have been severed and near to which they are always discovered. It is quite 

 evident that these aboriginal forests of Scotland at least, have been destroyed 

 by great conflagrations, kindled either purposely or accidentally, and perhaps 

 in each of these ways at different times. Some of the pine logs are excavated 

 longitudinally by the fire, so as to form spouts, such as are often supplied 

 to the eves of the roofs of houses for catching and carrying off the rain. 

 These appear to have been hollowed out by the fire, which had continued 

 to burn and smoulder on the upper side, after the tree had fallen into some 

 wettish place, the damp of which prevented its being consumed below. We 

 have legendary accounts enough in Scotland of the burning of great tracts 

 of forest to bear out the explanation of the appearance which these ligneous 

 remains exhibit. 



A definite example of an ancient burned wood was re- 

 vealed in the neighbourhood of Tongue in Sutherland 

 during the late Duke of Sutherland's endeavours to reclaim 

 the district, when large trees, charred for 10 to 15 feet of 

 their length, were discovered at a depth of 3 feet in the peat 

 mosses. Some of the trees, Dr Harvie-Brown was informed, 

 were 3 feet in diameter and " some of them are cored out 

 with fire for several feet in length as if they had been 

 burned down." Similar vast conflagrations, the brothers 

 John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart relate, "afford 

 frequent vivid similes in the old Gaelic poems." 



FINAL RESULTS 



These circumstantial accounts of man's inroads upon 

 Scottish woods will, I trust, bring home more definitely than 



