71 



places six or eight feet deep. Many of tLcse are very 

 large, and are tumbled do\ui one over another, sonic 

 lying in strait lines, and others in an oblique or trans- 

 verse position. If trees thus found had been felled by 

 the deluge, (as undoubtedly others were) they wtnild all 

 lie in one position. But this is not the case. We must 

 therefore seek for other causes. And one cause seems 

 to have been this. If water flowing either from springs 

 or streams be stopt, it naturally softens and loosens the 

 earth ; and in a course of time, even to the roots of 

 trees, which are then subject to be overturned by any 

 violent storm. This doubtless was the case with most 

 of those trees, that are found in bogs with the roots ad- 

 hering to them. Trees thus falling sink into the yield- 

 ing soil, and cause a farther stoppage in the course of 

 the waters. Hence the loose earth is increased, by a 

 yearly accession of scurf, moss, grass, and weeds. Add 

 to I's, that the higher lands being gradually dissolved 

 by repeated rains, and washed down by floods, in a 

 Jong course of years, cover the lower grounds with fresh 

 layers of earth. This being so, it is not strange to find 

 trees buried eight or ten feet under the earth. 



Another cause may be this. Various colonies from 

 time to time arriving in the then uncultivated country of 

 Ireland, would naturally make room for tillage and 

 pasture, by clearing the ground of its forests. This was 

 certainly the case, where we find in bogs trees partly 

 burned, and others bearing the mark of the axe. But 

 sometimes these colonies were driven by the natives 

 from their intended settlements, leaving the trees they 

 had felled strewed over the plain, which stopping the 

 waters, of course created bogs, that in process of time 

 covered those trees to a considerable depth. Nay, as 

 late as 156*1, Tyrone and O'Donnel marching toward 

 Kinsale, through Connaught, and laying the country 

 waste, there is a great tract of ground, now a bog, which 

 was then ploughed land. 



That bogs in general grow but slowly maybe gathered 

 from a lump of coins of Edward IV. (probably lost in a 

 purse which rotted away), taken up in a bog in York- 



