CALEDONLE. 307 



to germinate ; and secondly, that death is not owing 

 to any gradual deterioration of the timber, in that of 

 one succession becoming weaker than another, till 

 the last is so soft and spongy that the weather breaks 

 it up ; for the remains of the trees in the peat bogs, 

 and they are met with many feet below the surface, 

 are not inferior to the very best of those that still 

 remain at a few points on the surface, and even 

 provide a succession, though with comparatively 

 small and, as it is said, gradually diminishing addi- 

 tions. No matter what the trees are, they are per- 

 fect in their interment, according to the known 

 durability of their species. The sweet woods, as 

 they may be called, from having little pungency, or 

 astringent matter, such as the birch, the alder, and 

 the hazel, have form down to the minutest twig, but 

 they have no consistency, while the oak and the 

 pine, although consumed in the alluvium, in propor- 

 tion to the time they may be supposed to have lain, 

 as well as to the peculiar nature of the accumulation 

 over and about them, are perfect in the hearty wood. 



That latter fact is of some importance with regard 

 to the rot in the planted timber ; for, if it could not 

 be shown that " the last race" were as sound and 

 good in their quality as any of the others, the nur- 

 seryman might meet the strictures of the observer 

 of nature, by charging the rot on the trees, and not 

 on the mode of treatment, by saying that the 

 weakening of the timber is one of the symptoms 

 of the fading of native trees from the British soil. 

 But the facts render such a plea nugatory. 



As little can it be said that the forests perished 

 because the trees became barren ceased to bear 

 fruit after their kinds ; for the remains of fruit, in 

 all cases in which they are of such an imperishable 

 nature as that they can last in the cold and humid 

 bog, are as well preserved as the trees. Nutshells 

 are in some bogs, the only memorials of the hazel 

 coppices ; and they are found in thousands in places 



