Abstract
THE opinion was widely held amongst Irish and English historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that Ireland was densely wooded down to the last five hundred years, and that the disappearance of the native forests was chiefly due to their exploitation by English adventurers, and the effects of the wars and disturbances during Elizabethan and Cromwellian times. According to A. C. Forbes in his paper on “Some Legendary and Historical References to Irish Forests and their Significance”, read before the Royal Irish Academy on Feb. 22, a review of the various authors who were responsible for this conchusion has shown that none can be considered sufficiently acquainted with Ireland to have been an authority on the subject. State papers and other documents indicate that the arrival of the Normans in the twelfth century found Ireland much as it is to-day. A point of considerable interest is the exact position of forest land under the forest laws of the Normans. This forest land was the waste or unenclosed portion of the country, and had no direct connexion with woods or timber trees. Two Irish deafiorestation charters of the thirteenth century are in existence, but no record can be found of any proceeding for creating a forest, and Mr. Forbes advanced the theory that the wastes of both Ireland and England were normally afforested or subject to forest laws at a remote period, and that these laws were gradually removed by deafforestation, for which money payments were frequently made to the Crown. Manwood's “Lawes of the Forest” is a doubtful guide on this subject. A further point of interest is the existence of Pinus sylvestris in the Irish flora during the historic period. While the pine was a dominant species when the older bogs were being laid down, its existence as an indigenous tree during the last thousand years is extremely doubtful.
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Irish Forests. Nature 129, 430–431 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129430c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129430c0