24 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



Sir Cornelius Vermuiden, a Dutchman, he at length 

 effectually dischased, drained, and reduced it to con- 

 stant arable and . pasture grounds, with immense 

 labour, and at the -expense of about 400-,000/. In 

 the soil of all or mos^of these 180,000 acres of land, 

 of which 90,000 -were drained, even" in the bottom of 

 the river Ohse, and in the 'bottom of the adventitious 

 soil of all Marshland, and round about by the skirts 

 of the Lincolnshire Wolds, unto Gainsbury, Bawtry, 

 Doncaster, Bain, Snaith, and Holden,v. are found 

 vast multitudes of the roots and trunks 'of frees, of 

 all sizes, great and small, and of most of the sorts 

 which this island either formerly did, or at present 

 does, produce; as fir, oak, birch, beech, yew, 

 thorn, willow, ash, &c., the roots of all or most of 

 which stand in the soil in their natural position, as 

 thick as ever they could grow, as the trunks of most 

 of them lie by their proper roots. Most of the large 

 trees lie along about a yard from their roots, (to 

 which they evidently belonged, both ^by, their situation 

 and the sameness of the wood,) with their tops com- 

 monly north-east, though, indeed, 'the smaller trees 

 lie almost every way, across the former, some over, 

 and others under them; a third part of all being pitch 

 trees, or firs, some of which are thirty yards in 

 length or upwards, and sold for masts and keels of 

 ships. Oaks have been found, of twenty, thirty, and 

 thirty-five yards long, yet wanting many yards at 

 the small end; they are as black as ebony, and very 

 durable in any service they are put to. It is very 

 observable, and manifestly evident, that many of 

 those trees of all sorts have been burnt, but espe- 

 cially the pitch or fir trees, some quite through, and 

 some all on a side; some have been found chopped 

 and squared, some bored, others half split, with large 

 wooden wedges and stones in them, and broken axe- 

 heads, somewhat like sacrificing axes in shape ; and all 



