298 Changes of Timber and Plants^ csV. 



tigable and profound;" and in it, "there are mentioned 

 no less than twenty three different species of animals which 

 are now extinct^ but whose existence in former ages is 

 attested by their fossil remains ; no recent production 

 of the sort having ever been authenticated." 



I copy the passage relative to timber; page 36 of his 

 small pamphlet. " Many of the cavities between these 

 knolls are drj-, others are in a state of ponds, but an in. 

 finite number containing morasses, which must origi- 

 nally have been ponds, supplied by springs which still 

 flow at Jheir bottoms, and filled in the course of ages 

 with a succession of shell fish and the decay of ve- 

 getables; so that at present they are covered with timber ^ 

 and have been so within the memory of man. An old 

 man, upwards of sixty, informed us that all the differ- 

 ence he could remark between these morasses now, 

 and what they wtre. ffti/ years ago, was, that then they 

 were generally covered with firs, and now with beach. 

 This was verified by the branches and logs offr which 

 we found in digging ; many pieces of which had been cut 

 by beavers, the former inhabitants of these places, when 

 in the state of ponds. Scarcely a fir is now to be found 

 in the country.^'' 



My son Richard, who with Mr. Adlum, accompanied 

 me, in 1797 or 1798, on a tour into the wilderness in 

 Lycoming county, to view some of my new lands, re- 

 minds me that on these lands, invariably, the old de- 

 cayed timber long blown down, or fallen with age, was 

 of an entirely different species from that standing. We 

 found flourishing ash, 6 feet diameter, sugar maple, 6 

 feet through; and we measured one button wood, on 

 some fine rich bottoms on the waters of the Loyalsock, 



