no arts of husbandry. One wonders what large effects early man can have had, because a small population of hunters taking life only for its own subsistence, and not for any export, would hardly bring to extinction many of the animals we know were present at that time. It is probable that natural causes were much more important in changing the natural history of the Highlands in those days. A few degrees’ change of temperature for a period of years, for example, whether up or down, would work very great changes in the tree line and the specific constitution of the forests. The mountain tops would appear from the ice or disappear under it again for considerable spells, and everywhere the vital factor of moss growth would be affected. The growth-rate of sphagnum moss under optimum conditions has, in the deduced history of the Highlands, felled forests as surely as the fires and the axes of mankind.
The biggest effect man has exerted on the history of the Highlands has been in the destruction of the ancient forest—the great Wood of Caledon. This has happened within historic time, partly between A.D. 800 and 1100 and then from the 15th and 16th centuries till the end of the 18th. Even our own day cannot be exempt from this vast tale of almost wanton destruction, for the calls of the two German wars have been ruthless (Plate 7a). Much of this priceless remnant in Strath Spey and Rothiemurchus has been felled for ammunition boxes and the old pines of Locheil Old Forest went up in smoke during Commando training. These facts should never be forgotten as one of the consequences of war, and if nature reserves ever become a reality in the Scottish Highlands (as something distinct from National Parks, which are lungs for the people and playgrounds), the authorities should go to a great deal of trouble to bring about regeneration of the true Scots pine which is a tree different in many ways from the sombre article commonly grown in plantations as Scots. The true Scots pine (Plate 17) of the old forest is a very beautiful tree: its bottlegreen is distinctive, and so is the redness of its boughs; the needles are very short and the shape of the mature tree is often much more like that of an unhindered hardwood than the commonly accepted notion of a pine. A long clean stem is not necessarily typical. The true Scots pine is not easy to grow now, and when it is suggested that the authorities should be prepared to go to a lot of trouble to bring about its regeneration, it is because care and patience will be needed in addition to willingness. Regeneration, however, is a subject for a later chapter; we are now woefully concerned with destruction and its effects.
The old forest consisted of oak at the lower levels, with alders along the rivers and in soft places, and pines and birches elsewhere. Pines clothed the drier portions and birch the higher and the damper faces of the western hills. The true Scots pine is a relic in the ecological sense, and where fire or the hand of man swept away an expanse of the old pine it was birch which within a year or two provided the new growth. An excellent example of this opportunism of the birch is to be seen at Rhidorroch, above Ullapool, Ross-shire, where the early felling line is clearly marked, pines above and birch below, the opposite arrangement to what would be found in nature. The oak forest has nearly all gone, Argyll and southern Inverness-shire being the main parts where it is to be seen to-day in any quantity. Scarcely anywhere is it being taken care of, or regeneration active.
Nairn (1890) says that the great Caledonian Forest extended “from Glen Lyon and Rannoch to Strathspey and Strathglass and from Glencoe eastwards to the Braes of Mar.” The imagination of a naturalist can conjure up a picture of what the great forest was like: the present writer is inclined to look upon it as his idea of heaven and to feel a little rueful that he was born too late to “go native” in its recesses. But probably it was not so idyllic; the brown bears would have been little trouble, nor would the wild boar, and perhaps the wolf would not have given too many sleepless nights, but there would almost certainly have been more mosquitoes than at present, and malaria would have been a constant menace to our enjoyment of this primitive sylvan environment and its rich wild life.
The main trouble between A.D. 800 and 1100 was the Vikings, whether Danes or Norwegians. They were a destructive and parasitical folk, however colourful and well organized the civilization of the North may have been. Sometimes they set light to the forest to burn out the miserable natives who had taken refuge within it, and sometimes these same poor folk set light to strips of forest to act as a protection and screen from the Vikings. It would all depend on the airt of the wind, but the forest suffered anyway. The tradition of the burning by “Danes “ or “Norwegians” still exists in legends which may be heard in the North-West Highlands to-day. I know of several places said to be concerned with the burning in the forest of a Viking princess and the site of her grave has been pointed out to me in two places fifty miles apart. The West Highlands were also a source of boat-building timber for the Norsemen in Orkney and Iceland (Brögger, 1929).
The wanton burning of the western portions of the forest would doubtless be eased after Somerled’s Lordship of the Isles became established in the 11th century. This period was the most cultured and well ordered the West Highlands were to know for hundreds of years. Even as late as 1549, Dean Monro speaks of the wooded character of Isle Ewe and Gruinard Island in Ross-shire, affording good hiding for thieves and desperate men.
The woods of the Central Highlands were destroyed from the south-east. Gentlemen like the Wolf of Badenoch (floruit 1380) who was a brother of King Robert of Scotland, wandered through the country with large armed bands bent on plunder. Once more it was found that setting light to the forest was an easy way of smoking out or finishing off anyone who resisted. Local clan feuds must also have been a constant cause of forest fires of greater or lesser extent. The forests about Inveraray were destroyed by Bruce in an expedition against Cummin.
All these causes of destruction considered, we are still brought back to what I believe is a fundamental factor in the relation of man to the wild life around him, whether animal or vegetable. Man does not seem to extirpate a feature of his environment as long as that natural resource is concerned only with man’s everyday life: but as soon as he looks upon it as having some value for export—that he can live by selling it to some distant populations—there is real danger. The forests of the Highlands were discovered (this word was used at the period) by the Lowland Scots and the English at the beginning of the 16th century. Queen Elizabeth of England prohibited iron smelting in Sussex in 1556, and in the Furness district of Lancashire in 1563, because of the devastation caused to English woodlands. The smelters had to move farther north. The Scottish Parliament saw to what this would lead and passed an Act prohibiting anyone “to tak upoun hand to woork and mak ony issue with wod or tymmer under payne of confiscatioun of the haill yrne.” We can see exactly how this Act would work from the operations of black markets in Britain during the second German war. The game was so profitable that an occasional heavy fine was accepted as a normal tax on trade.
At this time also the woods were being destroyed actively for another reason—or perhaps two reasons. Thieves and rebels hid in the woods and wolves bred therein. It seems that infestation of the forests with these two forms of predatory fauna was so bad that it could be endured no longer. Menteith in The Forester’s Guide quotes an order by General Monk, dated 1654, to cut down woods round Aberfoyle as they were “great shelters to the rebels and mossers.” Ritchie, in giving an account of the extinction of the wolf in Scotland, mentions local tradition and definite record of woods being destroyed in the districts of Rannoch, Atholl, Lochaber and Loch Awe for this very purpose.
The suppression of the first Jacobite rebellion of 1715 gave an impetus to destruction. English business enterprises such as the York Buildings Company purchased forfeited estates and quite unashamedly set out to exploit them. Whatever was worth taking was taken, and the timber was one of the first things to go. But for the obstructive tactics of the Highlanders themselves it is probable that every vestige of pine forest would have gone at this time. The York Buildings Company went bankrupt, but not soon enough from the naturalist’s point of view. Even after this period between the rebellions, the higher standard of living which was more or less imposed on Highland proprietors by their taking up the English way of life, caused them to sell large areas of forest for smelting purposes. The prices paid for the trees were often ridiculously small. Ritchie says:
“The destruction wrought by these later and larger furnaces
