524 December 1748. 



THE Wood- lice are difagreeable infects, whicli 

 in a manner are worfe than the preceding; but 

 as L-have already defcribed them in a peculiar 

 memoir, which is printed among the memoirs of 

 the Royal Academy of Sciences for the year 1754, 

 I refer my readers to that account. 



Dec. iith. THIS morning I made a little 

 excurfion to Penns Neck, and further over the 

 Delaware to Wilmington. The country round 

 Pemis Neck has the fame qualities as that about 

 other places in this part of New Jerfiy. For 

 the ground confifts chiefly of fand, with a thin 

 ftratum of black foil. It is not very hilly, but 

 chiefly flat, and in moft places covered with 

 open woods of fuch trees as have annual leaves, 

 especially oak. Now and then you fee a fingle 

 farm, and a little corn-field round it. Between 

 them are here and there little marfhes or fwamps, 

 and fometimes a brook with water, which has a 

 very flow motion. 



THE woods of thefe parts con'fift of all forts 

 of trees, but chiefly of oak and hiccory. Thefe 

 woods have certainly never been cut down, and 

 have always grown without hindrance. It might 

 therefore be expeded that there are trees of an 

 uncommon great age to be found in them ; but 

 it happens otherwife, and there are vtiry few 

 trees three hundred -years old. Moft of them 

 are only two hundred years old ; and this con- 

 vinced me that trees have the fame quality as 

 animals, and die after they are arrived at a cer- 

 tain age. Thus we find great woods here, but 

 when the trees in them have flood an hundred 

 and fifty or an hundred and eighty years, they 



are 



