26 The Natural History of Selborne 



says positively,* that " there never were any fallen trees hidden 

 in the mosses of the southern counties." But he was mis- 

 taken : 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 shown pieces of 

 fossil wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the 

 inhabitants called fir : but, upon a nice examination, and trial 

 by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them ; and there- 

 fore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow or alder, 

 or some such aquatic tree. 1 



This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts 

 of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but 



* See his " History 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 

 concealed than in 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 underground, has an 

 influence in promoting a thaw, as well as the change of the weather from 

 a freezing to a thawing 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 underground : 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 " Hzemastatics," 

 p. 360. QUERE, Might not such observations be reduced to domestic 

 use, by promoting the discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about 

 houses ; and in Roman stations and camps lead to the finding of pave- 

 ments, baths, and graves, and other hidden relics of curious antiquity ? 



1 Many errors still occur even among "educated" people from a mis- 

 conception of the meaning of the \vordforgst. In early times, it did not 

 necessarily or even usually imply the presence of trees. A forest is not 

 a wooded district but one reserved for hunting and sport what we now 

 call a moor or heath. Wolmer Forest was never wooded at ancient dates, 



