447 
The use of foreign timber for our greater buildings, when to be 
had ; thus, Norway timber used for building the Abbey of Arbroath, 
in the 15th century. 
The importation of bow-staves and spear-shafts, such long straight 
timber not being procurable at home. 
The trees found in peat-mosses, for the most part small and few, 
and confined to narrow spaces, by no means prove a general cover- 
ing of wood in ancient times. 
One reason of the common error is the change of meaning which 
the word forest has undergone. From its etymology, the word has 
no connection with wood, and of old, and especially with old lawyers, 
it meant merely land privileged for the chase ; but many people, 
meeting the word in old charters and descriptions of estates, suppose 
it to mean as at present, wood-land. 
It is clear, however, that there has always been some wood, even 
timber, in Scotland. 
The earliest Christian churches were of timber, probably in all 
countries ; and the building of churches of stone was considered a 
novelty at the beginning of our acquaintance with church architec- 
ture in Scotland. 
The forts built in inland lakes and morasses, which the Irish 
have taught us to call cranogues, of great antiquity, perhaps the 
most ancient extant dwellings except caves and burrows, are found 
often built on piles of oak of moderate size, and sometimes with 
beams of birch for the cross timber. 
Sometimes beside these forts, but often apart, are found the shells 
of rude but large canoes, bespeaking a high antiquity, each hol- 
lowed out of a single oak. 
Within the period of history (a.d. 1249), the Earl of St Pol and 
Blois, preparing for the Crusades, had a wonderful ship (navis mi - 
randa) built at Inverness. 
The Bishop of Caithness, Chancellor of Scotland, and a friend of 
Edward the First, being engaged (a.d. 1291) in putting a roof on 
his cathedral of Dornoch, obtained from the king a grant of 40 
oaks, fit for timber, to be taken out of the wood ( bosco ) of Darna- 
way, in Moray. 
The Bishop of Brechin granting (a.d. 1435) a lease of the Kirk- 
davoch of Strachan for three lives, took the tenant bound to de- 
liver, not periodically, but once only, oak laths enough for roofing 
VOL. iv. 3 o 
