82 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 



alternating lamin?e of peat and sediment; or it may be abrupt. Of 

 course, the trees growing on the surface of the bog cannot escape 

 when the bog is killed; if the floods be violent and the winds be high 

 many of the trees, rooted in yielding soil, will be overturned; but if 

 the covering material be conveyed by the ordinary winds or by an 

 overflowing flood, the larger number of the trees will remain erect 

 or at most inclined. Davis^°^ has given an illustrative case. He has 

 figured a standing tree trunk seen near Marquette, Michigan. The 

 outer dune at that place had been cut by a storm only a few days 

 before his visit. The waves had undercut the bank and the sand 

 had slipped ofi^, leaving a vertical face. Near the base was a layer 

 of peat, one foot thick, filled with unchanged roots of shrubs and 

 Norway pine. A partly decayed trunk of pine, rooted in the peat, its 

 roots not extending below it, rises 8 feet through the overlying sand. 

 That the accumulation resting on the peat was not due to a sudden 

 overwhelming is clear, for at 2 feet above the peat is a layer of 

 Norway pine needles, while from that to the surface, are irregular 

 layers of sand with roots of trees, grasses and leaves of pine. The 

 accumulation was slow enough to permit vegetable growth at several 

 levels, but the stem did not break away, though the climate is moist. 

 It is possible for trees to remain alive for a long time after a thick 

 cover of porous material has been laid on the surface. Geinitz,^^** 

 has described a forest of great oaks and beeches, growing on a bed of 

 peat and covered in part by a dune. On the surface of the advancing 

 dune, one sees, as it were, thick-stemmed oak and beech shrubs ; but 

 these are merely the upper portions of trees, still living, but in great 

 part buried in the loose sand. At Morschwyl in Switzerland, where 

 the overlying deposit is fine-grained, stems 6 feet high project from 

 the peat into the marl above. Berry has described the buried bog 

 on the Chesapeake waters, where the cypress knees pass into the 

 overlying deposit. Seventy years ago, Lesquereux found leaves in 

 the marl overlying peat and the partings of Schieferkohle have plant 

 impressions. These leaves are transported material. 



At several localities to which reference has been made, one finds 



109 C. A. Davis, " Peat," 1907, p. 253. 



110 F. E. Geinitz, " Nach der Sturmflut," Aus der Natur, Vol. IX., 1908, 

 pp. 76-83. 



