ISO ON REMAINS OF INDIGENOUS WOOD IN ORKNEY. 
heaps or wave- worn like drift-wood, but firmly embedded in a stratum 
of peat, as though a tract of land had subsided to a lower level, carry- 
ing with it the trees and the soil in which they grew. 
As I left Orkney without having an opportunity of exploring Otters- 
wick Bay, the site of the most extensive submarine forest in Orkney, 
I wrote to a friend who used to live in that neighbourhood, inquiring 
what traces of indigenous wood he had seen there ; and as his letter in 
reply contains interesting information, I take the liberty of quoting 
from it as follows: — "In the winter of 1838 there was a long-con- 
tinued gale of north-east wind, which entirely cleared away the shell- 
sand from about fifty acres of the flat surface usually left dry at low 
water (our rise and fall of tide is twelve feet, and sometimes as much 
as fifteen feet). Going down one day at low tide, I was astonished 
to see, instead of the white sand, what appeared a wide stretch of 
black moss covered with fallen trees, lvinsr with their roots sticking 
up, exactly as I saw trees afterwards in Canada laid prostrate by I 
hurricane. I went down to the moss, stepped from trunk to trunk of 
the trees, and found their substance, when cut into by a spade, quite 
the same as that of the moss in which thev lav, iust that of our black- 
est coal-peat. The largest of the trees seemed not more than two feet 
in diameter, and all were lying in the same direction, from S.W. to 
N.E. I secured several specimens with the bark on, but they soon 
dried and fell into dust. On taking to a boat, I found the same moss 
surface, mostly denuded of sand, showing itself under the deep clear 
water, with trees lying along its surface, quite across the bay to Tufts- 
ness, four miles off, where a rupture of the peat had taken place— as 
all over that ness, under nine or ten feet of blowing shifting sand, the 
same peatmoss and tree remains are to be found as under the waters 
of the bav, although raised above high- water mark some ten or twelve 
feet. The rupture of the moss may be seen at most parts of the beach. 
In digging in the moss at Otterswick, I did not find any deer's horns 
or other animal remains." Here my quotation ends. 
The present state of Orkney as regards arboriculture may be briefly 
described. The original woods, doubtless, supplied fuel to the inhabit- 
ants, and would thus slowly but surely disappear; and it is a well- 
known fact that ft country or district entirely denuded of trees is with 
difficulty restored to its former condition : young plantations are best 
protected by other trees, and no walls or fences can adequately supply 
