LATER YEARS OF A PLANT. 209 



the graves of the great and the renowned, have disap- 

 peared ; nothing is left to mark the place where they once 

 stood, but the dark cypresses that saw them rise, and since 

 have overshadowed them for ages. 



But even after death, plants live on, as it were, and are 

 useful to man. Vast tracts of heath, covering large, low 

 basins, and formed by the annual accumulation of veget- 

 able matter, which in water becomes to a certain degree 

 decomposed or carbonized, finally produce those blackened 

 remains of plants which we call peat. 



Or extensive forests, covering valleys, and hillsides, are 

 overflooded, and the uprooted trees form a gigantic barrier, 

 which prevents the flowing off of the waters. An exten- 

 sive marsh is formed, particularly well adapted for the 

 growth of various kinds of mosses. As they perish they 

 are succeeded by others, and so for generations in un- 

 ceasing life and labor, until, in the course of time, the 

 bottom, under the influence of decay and the pressure 

 from above, becomes turf. Far below lies hard coal ; 

 the upper part is light and spongy. At various depths, 

 but sometimes as much as twenty feet below the surface, 

 an abundance of bogwood is found, consisting mostly of 

 oak, hard and black as ebony, or of the rich chocolate 

 colored wood of the yew. Such ancient forests every now 

 and then rise in awe-inspiring majesty from their grave. 

 The whole city of Hamburg, its harbor, and broad tracts 

 of land around it, rest upon a sunken forest, which is 

 now buried at an immense depth below the surface. It 

 contains mostly limes and oaks, but must also have 

 abounded with hazel-woods, for thousands of hazel-nuts are 



