28 NATURAL HISTORY 
fern, but is somewhat diversified with hills and 
dales, without having one standing tree in the whole 
extent. Inthe bottoms, where the waters stagnate, 
are many bogs, which formerly abounded with 
subterraneous trees, though Dr. Plot says posi- 
tively* that “there never were any fallen trees 
hidden in the mosses of the southern counties.” 
But he was mistaken; for I myself have seen cot- 
tages on the verge of this wild district, whose tim- 
bers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like 
oak, which the owners assured me they procured 
from the bogs by probing the soil with spits or some 
such instruments; but the peat is so much cut out, 
and the moors have been so well examined, that 
none has been found of late.t Besides the oak, I 
have also been shown pieces of fossil-wood, of a 
* See his Hist. of Staffordshire. - 
+ Old people have assured me that, on a winter’s morning, 
they have discovered these trees in the bogs by the hoar-frost, 
which lay longer over the space where they were concealed 
than on the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem to be a fan- 
ciful notion, but consistent with true philosopy. Dr. Hales 
saith, ‘“‘ That the warmth of the earth at some depth under ground 
has an influence in promoting a thaw, as well as the change of 
the weather from a freezing to a thawing state, is manifest from 
this observation, viz.: Nov. 29, 1731, a little snow having fallen 
in the night, it was, by eleven the next morning, mostly melted 
away on the surface of the earth, except in several places in 
Bushy Park, where there were drains dug and covered with earth, ~ 
on which the snow continued to lie, whether those drains were 
full of water or dry, as also where elm-pipes lay under ground; a 
plain proof, this, that those drains intercepted the warmth of the 
earth from ascending from greater depths below them; for the _ 
snow lay where the drain had more than four feet depth of earth 
over it. It continued also to lie on thatch, tiles, and the tops of 
walls.’—See Have’s Hemastatics, p. 360. Quere, Might not 
such observations be reduced to domestic use, by promoting the 
discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about houses ; and, 
in Roman stations and camps, lead to the finding of pavements, 
baths, and graves, and other hidden relics of curious antiquity ? 
