136 Rev. Mr Smith on a Submarine Forest 



tect themselves, when suiFered to grow over a whole country, 

 and thus enable trees to attain to a great size even on the shore, 

 this only forces us to inquire how forests could ever become 

 laro-e in the present circumstances ? or how, in the islands of 

 Tiree and Coll, and other smaller islands on the west coast, 

 where trees of an immense size are found in the moss lands, 

 and where the present breadth of the islands is not such that the 

 spray arising on one side might not be driven to the other, any 

 forest could exert a self-protecting power ? 



To account for the existence of such forests where trees do 

 not now grow, by considering them the produce of another soil, 

 transported by the agency of some strong current, seems un- 

 satisfactory ; and, when it is remembered that these trees are not 

 spread generally through diluvial depositions, but occur partially 

 in patches, and principally in mossy ground, and that they are 

 disposed in such a manner as would lead us to believe that they 

 are lying where they grew, to maintain that they have suffered 

 transportation seems rather an arbitrary judgment. Considering 

 the remains of forests which are so abundantly found along our 

 coasts, as now decaying where they once vegetated, and finding 

 that the spray, as well as the unbroken blast from the sea, stint 

 and destroy the growth of trees now planted even at a greater 

 distance from their influence than are those mighty remains of 

 past times, we must conclude that there is a change, and that all 

 things are not now as they then were. Obliged to consider the 

 nature of the vegetable fibre and growth, as well as the influence 

 of the spray and the breeze, the same now as formerly ; consid- 

 ering that the absorbing vessels of plants were then as liable to 

 have their healthy action interrupted and destroyed as now, and 

 that the sea-breeze would also have had as little deference for 

 their constitution, we must believe that such forests of trees as 

 are found buried under the soil on many parts of our coast, 

 could not, all things being the same, have existed in countries 

 where the desolating sea blast now destroys every shrub that 

 raises its head above the artificial protection which the cultivat- 

 ing havd of man gives it ; and so we must conclude, that all things 

 ;ire not the same, and that all those lands contiguous to the 

 •jcean, upon the W. and N W coasts especially, in which remains 

 of large trees are found, where none can at present be grown, do 



