CHAP, in S Y L V A 235 



were once standing in Holland, and those Low-coun- 

 tries, till about the year 860, that an hurricane ob- 

 structing the mouth of the Rhine near Catwic, made 

 that horrid devastation, good authors mention ; and 

 they do this day find monstrous bodies and branches, 

 (nay with the very nuts, most intire) of prostrate and 

 buried trees, in the Veene, especially towards the 

 south, and at the bottom of the waters : Also near 

 Bruges in Flanders, whole woods have been found 

 twenty ells deep, in which the trunks, boughs, and 

 leaves do so exactly appear, as to distinguish their 

 several species, with the series of their leaves yearly 

 fulling ; of which see Boetius de Boot. 



Dr. Plot in his Nat. Hist, of Oxford and Stafford- 

 shires mentions divers subterraneous oaks, black as 

 ebony, and of mineral substance for hardness ; (see 

 cap. 3. oak) quite through the whole substance of 

 the timber, caus'd (as he supposes, and learnedly 

 evinces) by a vitriolic humour of the earth ; of affinity 

 to the nature of the ink-galls, which that kind of tree 

 produces : Of these he speaks of some found sunk 

 under the ground, in an upright and growing posture, 

 to the perpendicular depth of sixty foot ; of which 

 one was three foot diameter, of an hardness emulating 

 the politest ebony : But these trees had none of them 

 their roots, but were found plainly to have been cut 

 off by the kerf : There were great store of hasel-nuts, 

 whose shells were as sound as ever, but no kernel 

 within. It is there the inquisitive author gives you 

 his conjecture, how these deep interments happen'd ; 

 namely, by our ancesters (many ages since) clearing 

 the ground for tillage, and when wood was not worth 

 converting to other uses, digging trenches by the 

 sides of many trees, in which they buried some ; and 



