These natural woods, however, have long, excepting in a comparatively few instances, wholly ceased to exist. This has been owing to various causes. Extensive forests, occupying a long tract of tolerably level ground, have been gradually destroyed by natural decay, accelerated by the increase of the bogs. The wood which they might have produced was useless to the proprietors; the state of the roads, as well as of the country in general, not permitting so bulky and weighty an article to be carried from the place where it had grown, however valuable it might have proved had it been transported elsewhere. In this situation the trees of the natural forests pined and withered, and were thrown down by the wind, and it often necessarily happened that they fell into, or across, some little stream or rivulet, by the side of which they had flourished and decayed. The stream, being stopped, saturated with standing water the soil around it, and instead of being, as hitherto, the drain of the forest, the stagnation of the rivulet converted into a swamp what its current had formerly rendered dry. The loose bog-earth, and the sour moisture with which it was impregnated, loosened and poisoned the roots of other neighbouring trees, which, at the next storm, went to the ground in their turn, and tended still more to impede the current of the water; while the accumulating moss, as the bogearth is called in Scotland, went on increasing and heaving up, so as to bury the trunks of the trees which it had destroyed. In the counties of Inverness and Ross, instances may be seen, at the pre

sent day, where this melancholy process, of the conversion of a forest into a bog, is still going forward.

This, however, was not by any means the only manner in which the northern forests perished, although it may be in some sense accounted their natural mode of death.

From the time of Agricola and Severus, to that of Cromwell, the axes of the invading enemies were repeatedly employed to lay waste the forests, and thereby remove a most important part of the national defence. In this way, doubtless, woods which, standing on the banks of rapid streams, or upon declivities where the course of the water is not liable to be intercepted, were not subject to the causes of destruction by the increase of the morass, fell by violence, as in the former case they perished by decay.

Nature, however, would, with her usual elasticity, have repaired the losses which were inflicted by the violence of man, and fresh crops of wood would have arisen to supply the place of that which had been felled, had not the carelessness and wantonness of mankind obstructed her efforts. The forest of Ettrick, for example, a tract of country containing two hundred and seventy square miles, was, till Charles I.'s time, reserved as a royal chase, and entirely wooded, except where the elevation of the mountains rendered the growth of trees impossible. In and about the year 1700, great part of this natural wood remained, yet now, excepting the copse woods of Harehead and Elibank, with some

trifling remains on the banks of the Yarrow, it has totally vanished. We have ourselves seen an account of a sale of growing trees upon an estate in this district where the proceeds amounted to no less than six thousand pounds, a very large sum considering that the country was overstocked with wood, the demands for it confined to those of rural economy, and the means of transporting it extremely imperfect. There must have been a fall of large and valuable timber to have produced such a sum under such circumstances. The guardians of the noble proprietor, when they made the sale, seem to have given directions for enclosing the natural wood, with a view to its preservation. Nevertheless, about seventy or eighty years afterwards, there was scarcely in existence, upon the whole property, a twig sufficient to make a walking-stick, so effectually had the intentions of the guardians been baffled, and their instructions neglected. It may be some explanation of this wilful waste, that a stocking of goats (of all other creatures the most destructive to wood) had been put upon the ground after cutting the trees. But to speak the truth, agriculture, as Mr Shandy says of the noble science of defence, has its weak points. Those who pursue one branch of the art are apt to become bigoted and prejudiced against every thing which belongs to another, though no less essential, department. The arable cultivator, for example, has a sort of pleasure in rooting up the most valuable grass land, even where the slightest reflection might assure him that it would be more profitable to reserve it for

pasture. The store-farmer and shepherd, in the same manner, used formerly to consider every spot occupied by a tree as depriving the flock of a certain quantity of food, and not only nourished malice against the woodland, but practically laboured for its destruction; and to such lamentable prejudices on the part of farmers, and even of proprietors, is the final disappearance of the natural forests of the north chiefly to be attributed. The neglect of enclosure on the side of the landlord; the permitted, if not the authorized, invasions of the farmer; the wilful introduction of sheep and cattle into the ground where old trees formerly stood, have been the slow, but effectual, causes of the denuded state of extensive districts, which, in their time, were tracts of what the popular poetry of the country called by the affectionate epithet of "the good green wood." Still, however, the facts of such forests having existed, ought now, in more enlightened times, to give courage to the proprietor, and stimulate him in his efforts to restore the silvan scenes which ignorance, prejudice, indolence, and barbarism combined to destroy.

This may be done in many different ways, as taste and local circumstances recommend. We will first take a view of the subject generally, as applicable alike to the great chiefs and thanes possessed of what are, in the north, called countries,1 and to the private gentleman, who has three or four thou

It is customary to say Glengarry's country, MacLeod's country, and the like, to indicate the estates of the great Highland proprietors.

sand moorland acres, or even a smaller property. We suppose the proprietor, in either case, desirous to convert a suitable part of his estate into woodland, at the least possible expense, and with the greatest chance of profit.

The indispensable requisites which his undertaking demands are. 1st, a steady and experienced forester, with the means of procuring, at a moment's notice, a sufficient number of active and intelligent assistants. This will often require settlements on the estate, the advantage of which we may afterwards touch upon. If the plantations are to be on an extensive scale, it will be found of great advantage to have the labour of these men entirely devoted to the woods, since they afford various kinds of employment for every month of the year, especially where a great plan is in the progress of being executed, as reason dictates, by certain proportions every year. In such a case, enclosing, planting, pruning, thinning, and felling are going on successively in different parts of the estate in one and the same year ;—and these are operations in all of which a good woodsman ought to be so expert as to be capable of working at them by

turns.

2dly. The planter, in the situation supposed, ought to be possessed of one nursery or more, as near to the ground designed to be planted, as can well be managed. We have no intention to interfere with the trade of the nurseryman in the more level and fertile parts of the country. Where a proprietor means only to plant a few acres, it would