70 THE MEDALS OF CREATION. Cuap. V. 
SupMercED Forests. Prat.—The phenomenon of exten-— 
sive tracts of marsh-land, with layers of prostrate trees of 
all ages, lying but a few feet beneath the common alluvial 
soil, is of frequent occurrence, both inland, and in many 
places along the shores of our island. (Geol. S. #. p. 18). 
These submerged forests are generally situated below the 
level of the sea, and afford unquestionable proof of subsi- 
dences of the land. The trees are of the kinds indigenous 
to the districts in which they occur ; and leaves and seeds of 
the hazel, beech, elm, &c. are often preserved in the silt in 
which the prostrate forests are imbedded. On the Sussex 
coast there are accumulations of this kind, at Bexhill, 
Pevensey levels, Felpham, &c. 
The extensive subterranean forests exposed in the Fens 
of Lincolnshire by the operations carried on for draining 
that district, must be familiar to those who travel by the 
Great Northern Railway: the protruding upright stems, 
broken off at a short distance above the primitive soil, will — 
remind the geological observer of the petrified forest of the 
Isle of Portland. 
The wood in these cases has undergone no change but — 
that of being dyed black, by an impregnation of solutions 
of iron; and many trunks are in so sound a state as to 
be employed in building. The oak timbers of the Royal 
George, lately raised up from off Portsmouth, after being 
immersed in silt about sixty years, closely resemble in colour 
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and texture the wood of the submerged forests. Skeletons of | 
deer, horse, swine, &c. are occasionally found imbedded in 
these subterranean accumulations of vegetable remains; and — 
sometimes canoes, formed of the trunk of an oak, constructed 
by the aboriginal inhabitants of Britain, with stone imple- — 
ments called celts, are met with at considerable depths. 
In the peat bogs of Ireland (Wond. p. 66), large forest 
trees often occur, together with the skeletons of the elk, 
deer, and other animals of the chase ; and in a few instances 
