380 MR J. GEIKIE ON THE BUKIED FORESTS 



mena are said to characterise " many of the deepest mosses of the continent." 

 Thus the chief cause of the destruction of our ancient forests appears to have 

 been a change of climate. The altered atmospheric conditions were not only 

 directly unfavourable to the propagation of forest trees over certain large dis- 

 tricts, they also brought about a vast increase of marsh plants. To the chilling 

 effect of the wet bog mosses in their upward growth must be attributed the over- 

 throw of by far the greater portion of the buried timber in our peat bogs. 



As the origin of this change carries us back far beyond the earliest dawn of 

 history, it follows, that much of the peat and buried timber of our country may 

 be of great antiquity. And, indeed, in the case of many mosses, we seem more 

 likely to err in ascribing too recent than too early a date to the period of their 

 formation. We cannot estimate the time which has gone by since our western 

 islands supported those timber trees, the remains of which are dug out of the 

 mosses. It is highly probable that at this early period those islands were joined 

 with the mainland, and shared a continental climate. To the same date we may 

 refer much of the buried timber of the Orkney and Shetland Islands. Again, the 

 more elevated peat mosses of our country must have been among the first to be 

 formed ; for, as already remarked, any change from a continental to an insular 

 state, would tell first upon the trees that grow along the sea-board, and at the 

 higher elevations of the land. It seems very reasonable therefore to conclude 

 that, long before the Romans set foot in Britain, the growth of peat moss and the 

 overthrow of timber had made considerable progress ; that, in short, the Sylva 

 Caledonice was but the relics of that great forest which in former ages had 

 spread all over the area of these islands and the German Ocean. 



I cannot enter into the vexed question of the probable area of wooded land 

 in Scotland at the time of the Roman invasion, but there can be little doubt that 

 had our peat mosses never yielded any remains of former forests, very little could 

 now be said for the wooded condition of Scotland in the days of the Caesars. The 

 buried trees are of no avail as evidence, unless we can prove them to have been 

 overturned since the times of which Tacitus writes ; and it is surprising how few 

 tree-bearing or other peat mosses can be shown to be of this or later dates. By far 

 the greater number belong to much earlier times. In the few historical notices 

 given above of the state of the Scottish woods in ages subsequent to the de- 

 parture of the Romans, no small share in the work of destruction has been 

 assigned to man himself. How far his efforts were seconded by an adverse 

 climate it is impossible even to conjecture. But that to some extent they may 

 have been is not unlikely, from the fact that some of the buried trees, belonging 

 to peat of Scoto-Saxon and still more recent dates, have evidently fallen from 

 natural decay ; while, in many districts, which record and tradition allow to have 

 been at one time well wooded, the indigenous wood of the country either refuses 

 to grow, or at best attains to but a sorry size. 





