24 POPULAR ERRORS. 



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" The existence of a succession of forests of 

 different prevailing species has been satisfactorily 

 established in Denmark by the researches of Steen- 

 strop on the Skovmose, or forest bogs of that 

 country. These bogs are from twenty to thirty 

 feet in depth, and the remains of forest trees in 

 successive layers prove that there have been three 

 distinct periods of vegetation in Denmark first a 

 period of the pine; secondly a period of the oak; 

 lastly a period of the beech, not yet arrived at its 

 culmination." 



Similar buried forests are found in our own coun- 

 try, in New Jersey, Wyoming and elsewhere. 

 These extinct forests, he says, have no doubt 

 " stocked the accumulating soils with their stores 

 of vitalized fruitage. ' " The drift deposits became 

 the vast granary in which nature preserved her 

 store of seeds through the long rigors of a geolo- 

 gical winter. ' 



Such is the theory presented by an astute geolo- 

 gist, to account for the reappearance of vegetation 

 after the glacial epoch, as at, least more probable 

 than spontaneous generation, or the " fortuitous 

 distribution by any modern agency. ' He directly 

 adds, however: " it must be confessed that crucial 

 observation is yet to be made. If vegetable germs 

 exist in the drift they can be discovered before- 



