26 FOREST OF WOLMER. 



Rogate, and Trotton, in the county of Sussex ; by 

 Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty 

 consists entirely of sand, covered with heath and 

 fern; but is somewhat diversified with hills and 

 dales, without having one standing tree in the whole 

 extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, 

 are many bogs, which formerly abounded with sub- 

 terraneous trees ; though Dr. Plot says positively,* 

 that " there never were any fallen trees hidden in 

 the mosses of the southern counties." But he was 

 mistaken ; for I myself have seen cottages on the 

 verge of this wild district, whose timbers 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.f Besides the oak, I have also been 



* See his Hist, of Staffordshire. 



f 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 con- 

 cealed, than on the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem 

 to be a fanciful notion, but consistent with true philosophy. 

 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 thaw- 

 ing 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 HALES'S Htemastatics, 



