OCR Text |
Show 306 SYLVA wish for nothing further than to have something to say upon a subject, they cannot satisfy the attentive observer of nature. Those decays of the forests have taken place in situations where no invading army ever was or could come. Then as for the conflagration- it would be a powerful flame that could reach from Caithness to Orkney, or from Skye to the Long Island; nor would it be an ordinarY: fire that would burn across the summit of a lofty ndge, and down the other side, especially when) as must have been the case when the hill-sides of Scotland were close forests and the bottoms pools of water, the summit of that ridge was clad with perpetual snow. Besides, if the trees had been burnt, the charcoal would have been found, for charcoal is one of the most indestructible of substances. The charcoal of the fires at the signal posts already alluded to, remains in great quantity-indeed, it is that which most simply and effectually confounds those who will have it that these trifling fusions of stone by common fires and wood-ashes at the surface are volcanic operations that have long ago taken place in the bowels of the earth; and if the ashes of a few billets fetched from its skirts have remained, it would be passing strange that the charcoal of the whole Sylva CaledonirE, the conflagration of which, if it happened, must have been more recent, should be entirely lost. But the fact is, that the pine forests both of Scot .. land and the Scottish isles, and of Ireland, have been buried, and not burnt. The remains of them are in the bogs of both countries, so abundant as to serve in many cases both as fuel and as a substitute for candles; and so sound and fresh as, in not a few, to answer the purposes of domestic economy. In the natural history of vegetables, those facts are important in two respects ; first, they show that there are certain periods at which forests fade off, both by the old trees dying and the seeds ceasing CALEDONI.JE. 307 to germinate ; and secondly, that death is not owing to any gradual deterioration of the timber, in that of one succession becoming weaker than another, till the last is so soft and spongy that the weather breaks it up; for the remains of the trees in the peat boo-s and they are met with many feet below the surfa~e' are not inferior to the very best of those that stili remain at a few points on the surface, and even provide a succession, though with comparatively small and, as it is said, gradually diminishing additions. No matter what the trees are, they are perfect in their interment, according to the known durability of their species. The sweet woods, as the~ may be called, from having little pungency, or astrmgent matter, such as the birch, the alder, and the hazel, have form down to the minutest twig, but t~ey have no consistency, while the oak and the ~me, althou&"h consumed in the alluvium, in proportion to the tune they may be supposed to have lain, as well as to the peculiar nature of the accumulation over and about them, are perfect in the hearty wood. That lat.ter fact is of some importance with regard to the rot m the planted timber ; for, if it could not be shown that "the last race" were as sound and good in their quality as any of the others, the nurseryman might meet the strictures of the observer of nature, by charging the rot on the trees, and not on the mode of treatment,-by saying that the weakenin&" of the t~mber is one of the symptoms of the fadmg of native trees from the British soil. But th~ facts reJ?-der suc.h a plea nugatory. As httle can It be smd that the forests perished because the trees became barren-ceased to bear fruit after. thei~ kinds ; for the remains of fruit. in all cases m whiCh they are of such an imperishable nature as that they can last in the cold and humid bog, .are as well preserved as the trees. Nutshells are I!I some bogs, the only memorials of the hazel coppiCes; and they are found in thousands in places |