prosperity from the old
industries that for centuries had been her mainstay. In the days when
the Norman conquerors first set foot upon English soil the virgin woods,
broken occasionally by fields and villages, had stretched in dense
formation from the Scottish border to Sussex and Devonshire. But with
the passage of five centuries a great change had been wrought. The
growing population, the expansion of agriculture, the increasing use of
wood for fuel, for shipbuilding, and for the construction of houses, had
by the end of the Tudor period so denuded the forests that they no
longer sufficed for the most pressing needs of the country.

Even at the present day it is universally recognized that a certain
proportion of wooded land is essential to the prosperity and
productivity of any country. And whenever this is lacking, not only do
the building, furniture, paper and other industries suffer, but the
rainfall proves insufficient, spring floods are frequent and the
fertility of the soil is impaired by washing. These misfortunes are
slight, however, compared with the disastrous results of the gradual
thinning out of the forests of Elizabethan England. The woods were
necessary for three all-important industries, the industries upon
which the prosperity and wealth of the nation were largely
dependent--shipbuilding, for which were needed timber, masts, pitch,
tar, resin; the manufacture of woolens, calling for a large supply of
potash; smelting of all kinds, since three hundred years ago wood and
not coal was the fuel used in the furnaces. It was with the deepest
apprehension, then, that thoughtful Englishmen watched the gradual
reduction of the forest areas, for it seemed to betoken for their
country a period of declining prosperity and economic decay. "When
therefore our mils of Iron and excesse of building have already turned
our greatest woods into pasture and champion within these few years,"
says a writer of this period, "neither the scattered forests of England,
nor the diminished groves of Ireland will supply the defect of our
navy."[1-1]

From this intolerable situation England sought relief through foreign
commerce. If she could no longer smelt her own iron, if she could not
produce ship-stores or burn her own wood ashes, these things might be
procured from countries where the forests were still extensive,
countries such as those bordering the Baltic--Germany, Poland, Russia,
Sweden. And so the vessels of the Musco