Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/411

F O R F B 397 songs showing great care in the exact rendering of the words, with regard to both accent and meaning. FORD UN, JOHN T OF. Little is known with any certainty of this chronicler, and the so-called lives of him are mainly a collection of conjectures more or less probable. The credulity of our early writers is pardonable ; the nonsense of some later ones is without excuse. A notice inserted in the New Statistical Account of the parish of Fordoun in Kincardineshire begins thus : "John of Fordun, the his torian, was either a native of the parish or resident in it, when he wrote his history of Scotland. He is called by Bede venerabilis vir Dominus Joannes Fordun, Pres byter. " The writer s notions of chronology must have been somewhat peculiar. The statement generally made that the chronicler was bora at Fordoun has apparently no better foundation than his name. It is certain that he was a secular priest, and that he composed his history in the latter part of the 14th century ; and it is probable that ho was a chaplain in the cathedral of Aberdeen. The work of Fordun is the earliest attempt to write a continuous history of Scotland ; nothing existed previously except brief chronicles and genealogical memoranda. It is divided into five books. The first three are almost entirely fabulous, and form the groundwork on which Boece and Buchanan afterwards raised the huge structure of historical and political fiction, which was first exposed by Thomas limes in his Critical Essay. The 4th and 5th books, though still mixed with fable, contain much valuable infor mation, and become more authentic the more nearly they approach the author s own time. The 5th book concludes with the death of King David I. in 1153. Besides these five books, Fordun wrote part of another book, and collected materials for bringing down the history to a later psriod. These materials were used by a continuator who vrote in the middle of the 15th century, and who is commonly, and no doubt correctly, identified with Walter Bower, abbot of the monastery of Inchcolm. The additions of Bovver form eleven books, and bring dow r n the narrative to the death of King James I. in 1437. Accord ing to the custom of the time, the continuator did not hesitate to interpolate Fordun s portion of the work with additions of his own, and the whole history thus compiled is known as the Scotichronicon. The first printed edition of Fordun s work was that of Thomas Gale in his Scriptores Qxindecim, which was published in 1691. This was followed by Thomas Hearne s edition in 1722. The whole work, including Bower s continuation, was published by Walter Goodall at Edinburgh in 1759. In 1871 and 1872 Fordun s chronicle, in the original Latin and also in an English translation, was edited by Mr William F. Skene in the series of The Historians of Scotland. Mr Skene s preface to this valuable edition contains full information both in regard to the author, the manuscripts of his work, and the printed editions. Reference may also be made to Thomas Innes s Critical Essay, vol. i. p. 201-214 ; to the biographical notice of Fordun in the second volume of Tytler s Lives of Scottish Worthies ; and to Mr Felix G. H. Skene s preface to the " Liber Fluscardensis," in the series of The Historians of Scotland. FORESTS, FOREST ADMINISTRATION. A forest is a tract of country covered with trees, of one or several spe cies, or with trees and underwood. Forests are of the greatest importance in the general economy of the globe, influencing the humidity of the air and the soil, mitigating the extremes of heat and cold, affording shelter to man and beast, and enriching the soil on which they grow. Trees supply timber and fuel to man, and furnish him with a vast variety of economical products, such as gums, drugs, dyes, and articles of food. The management of large areas of natural or planted wood-lands is called Forestry or Sylviculture. For the culture and uses of individual trees, see the separate articles, such as BIRCH, ELM, FIE, OAK, <tc. ; and for ornamental belts, avenues, fee., the reader is referred to ARBORICULTURE. Historical records give us reason to believe that the habitable earth was generally covered with forest growth before it became the abode of man, and additional proof of this is found in the extensive remains of ancient trees. The geological record may also be referred to, as evidencing by its coal-fields the extensive breadths once covered by the richest vegetation. The arboreous vegetation of the earth is remarkable for its great variety : many countries are rich in pines, others in oaks ; Australia in Eucalyptus or gum trees, India in teak, California in Wellingtonia or Sequoia, and Brazil in palms. Trees, like other plants, require different degrees of heat; light, moisture, and elevation above the sea for their vigorous development, and hence various countries have their characteristic forests. The birches and pines of the North make way in the temperate zone for oaks and beeches, and in the tropics for palms and other heat-loving trees. The same trees seem to require similar climates, but the same climates do not always produce the same plants. The mountains of South India and Ceylon closely resemble the regions where tlie cinchona forests occur, but the genus is wanting in Asia. Again the teak is unknown in America, although parts of Brazil resemble its home in Malabar. These auomalies are explained perhaps mainly by the primitive distribution of the plants (see DISTRIBU TION). It is also remarkable that some forests consist solely of one particular tree (on the Continent technically called "pure forest," in contradistinction to mixed forests), such as the birch in Lapland, the deodar in the Himalaya, the Abies canadensis and Pinus Strobus in North America. The European forests, on the contrary, are generally com posed of coniferous trees mingled with oak, elm, ash, beech, poplar, willow, alder, birch, and lime, interspersed with hornbeam, and various species of Pyrus and Pmnus, the underwood being hazel, elder, buckthorn, viburnum, roses, &c. The American forests contain a still greater variety of species, a fact strikingly illustrated by Sir J. D. Hooker, in speaking of a patch of native forest a few miles from St Louis on the Missouri: "In little more than half an hour, and less than a mile s walk, I saw forty kinds of timber trees, including eleven of oak, two of maple, two of elm, three of ash, two of walnut, six of hickory, three of willow, and one each of plane, lime, hornbeam, hop-hornbeam, laurus, diospyros, poplar, birch, mulberry, and horse-chestnut, together with about half that number of shrubs." Natural forests may be divided into several classes, and in Kurz s forest flora of British Burmah the classification adopted is as follows : Evergreen Forests. 1. Littoral Forests. 2. Swamp Forests. 3. Tropical Forests 4. Hill Forests. Deciduous or Leaf Shedding Forests. 5. Open Forests. 6. Dry Forests. 7. Mixed Forests. Dune Forests. The following table, calculated by Rentzsch (Der Wald), from statis tics obtained prior to 1862, shows tlie proportion of woodland in different European countries, as estimated at that date : Norn-ay fi6 00 per cent. Sweden 60-00 Russia 3090 Germany 2(i-">8 ,, Belgium IS -V2 France 1(> 79 Switzerland 15 00 Sardinia 12 29 per cent. Neapolitan States... 9 43 Holland 7-10 Spain 5 52 Denmark 5-">0 Great Britain . r -00 Portugal 4-40 Siemoni gave in 1872 the proportion in Turkey at 24 per cent., and in United Italy 870 per cent.