IRELAND’S LOST GLORY. 
Tots is perhaps no feature of 
Irish scenery more character- 
istic and depressing than the 
almost universal absence of 
those tracts of woods which in other 
countries soften the outlines of hills 
and valleys. The traveler gazing on 
its bald mountains and treeless glens 
can hardly believe that Ireland was at 
one time covered from shore to shore 
with magnificent forests. One of the 
ancient names of the country was ‘‘The 
Isle of Woods” and so numerous are 
its place-names derived from _ the 
growth of woods, shrubs, groves, oaks, 
etc., that (as Dr. Joyce says) “if a wood 
were now to spring up in every place 
bearing a name of this kind the coun- 
try would become clothed with an 
almost uninterrupted succession of 
forests.” On the tops of the barest 
hills and buried in the deepest bogs 
are to be found the roots, stems and 
other remains of these ancient woods, 
mostly of oak and pine, some of the 
bogs being literally full of stems, the 
splinters of which burn like matches. 
The destruction of these woods is of 
comparatively recent date. Cambren- 
sis, who accompanied Henry II. into 
Ireland in the twelfth century, notices 
the enormous quantities of woods 
everywhere existing. But their extir- 
pation soon began with the gradual 
rise of English supremacy in the land, 
the object in view being mainly to in- 
crease the amount or arable land, to 
deprive the natives of shelter, to pro- 
vide fuel, and to open out the country 
for military purposes. So anxious 
were the new landlords to destroy the 
forests that many old leases contain 
clauses coercing tenants to use no 
other fuel. Many old trees were cut 
down and sold for twelve cents. Ona 
single estate in Kerry, after the revolu- 
tion of 1688, trees were cut down of 
the value of $100,000. A paper laid 
before the Irish houses of parliament 
describes the immense quantity of 
timber that in the last years of the 
seventeenth century was shipped from 
ports in Ulster, and how the great 
woods in that province (290,000 trees 
in all) were almost destroyed. 
The houses passed an act for the 
planting, of 250,000 trees, but it was of 
no avail, and so denuded of timber had 
the country become that large works 
started in Elizabeth’s reign for the 
smelting of iron were obliged to be 
stopped at last for want of charcoal. 
The present century has continued the 
deplorable story of destruction. In 
forty years, from 1841 to 1881, 45,000 
acres of timber were cut downand sold. 
Every landlord cut down, scarcely 
anyone planted, so that at the present 
day there is hardly an eightieth part 
of Ireland’s surface under timber. 
BIRDS AND REPTILES RELATED. 
OSSIL remains have been found 
| : of birds with teeth and long 
bony tails, and also of reptiles, 
with wings; great monsters 
they must have been—veritable flying 
dragons. 
In 1861, in the lithographic slates of 
Solenhofen, Bavaria, a fossil feather 
was found which was the subject of 
considerable discussion among natural- 
ists. Again,in 1862,acurious skeleton 
was disinterred from the same place, 
in which most of the bones exhibited 
the marks of a true bird, but the skel- 
eton had a most remarkable tail, con- 
taining twenty distinct bones. From 
each of these bones proceeded a pair 
of well-developed feathers, similar to 
the single feather which had been pre- 
viously found. Here was an animal 
which could be called a birdlike rep- 
tile or a lizardlike bird, with equal pro- 
priety. Its twenty caudal segments 
or vertebrz were a bar to its entrance 
to every existing family of birds, while 
nee equally out of place among rep- 
tiles. 
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