1 8 FOREST OF WOLMER. 



Sussex by Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. 

 This royalty consists entirely of sand, covered 

 with heath and fern ; but is somewhat diversified 

 with hills and dales, without having one standing 

 tree in the whole extent. In the bottoms, where 

 the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which for- 

 merly abounded with subterraneous trees : though 

 Dr. Plot says positively *, that " there never were 

 any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the 

 southern counties." But he was mistaken ; for I 

 myself have seen cottages on the verge of this 

 wild district, whose timbers consisted of a black 

 hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners 

 assured me they procured from the bogs by pro- 

 bing the soil with spits, or some such instruments : 

 but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors 

 have been so well examined, that none has been 

 found of late 2 . Besides the oak, I have also been 



1 See his Hist, of Staffordshire. 



2 Old people have assured me, that on a winter's morning 

 they have discovered these trees in the bogs, by the hoar 

 frost, which lay longer over the space where they were con- 

 cealed, than on the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem 

 to be a fanciful notion, but consistent with true philosophy. 

 Dr. Hales saith, " That the warmth of the earth, at some 

 depth under ground, has an influence in promoting a thaw, 

 as well as the change of the weather from a freezing to a 

 thawing state, is manifest from this observation ; viz. Nov. 

 29, 1731, a little snow having fallen in the night, it was, by 

 eleven the next morning, mostly melted away on the surface 

 of the earth, except in several places in Bushy Park, where 

 there were drains dug and covered with earth, on which the 

 snow continued to lie, whether those drains were full of 

 water or dry ; as also where elm-pipes lay under ground : a 

 plain proof this, that those drains intercepted the warmth of 

 the earth from ascending from greater depths below them ; 

 for the snow lay where the drain had more than four feet 

 depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie on thatch, 

 tiles, and the tops of walls." See HALE'S Heemastatics, 

 p. 360. Quere, Might not such observations be reduced 



