On Thu, 08 May 2008 18:21:09 +1200, Someone else
wrote:

Ireland was covered in trees before the English needed timber to built
the fleet that fought the Spanish Armada.

All else being equal, if they cut down every large tree in Ireland for
the task (and I doubt they'd need so many), one presumes the smaller
trees would have grown to replace them within fifty years, so
something more of an explanation would seem called for.

For example farming and firewood, especially as the population grew
into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

J.