6? 



Birmingham and Brumley, in Lincolnshire, are several great hills of 

 loose sand, which, as they are yearly worn and blown away, there 

 are discovered under them many roots of great firs or pitch trees, 

 with the impresses of the axe as fresh upon them as if they had but 

 been cut down a few weeks, which I have several times, with plea- 

 sure, taken notice of, as I have rode that way. 



Hazel nuts and acorns have frequently been found, at the bottom 

 of the soil of those levels and moors ; and fir or pitch tree apples, or 

 cones, in great quantities, by whole bushels together. And at the 

 very bottom of a new river or drain, that the drainers cut, (almost 

 100 yards wide, and four or five miles long) were found old trees, 

 squared and cut, rails, stoups, bars, old links of chains, horses' heads, 

 an old axe somewhat like a battle-axe, with two or three coins of the 

 Emperor Vespasian : but that which is more observable, is, that the 

 very ground, at the bottom of the river, was found, in some places, 

 to lie in rigg and fur, manifesting thereby, that it had been tilled 

 and ploughed in former days. 



From an oak tree having been found in these moors forty yards 

 long, four yards diametrically thick at the great end, three yards 

 and a foot in the middle, and two yards over at the small end ; and 

 which, by moderate computation, appeared to have been as long 

 again: and from a pitch or fir tree having been found thirty-six yards 

 long, the computed length of which might be fifteen yards more, he 

 observes, there is reason to suppose, that the trees of these levels 

 must have ^een exceeding great. 



The Rev. W. Derham relates, that many subterraneous trees were 

 laid bare by a breach in the Thames wall ; when, by the violence of 

 the water, a passage was torn up, an hundred yards wide, and twenty 

 feet deep. Mr. Derham says, we discover these trees all along the 

 Thames side, over against Rainham, Wennington, Purfleet, and other 

 places. The trees appeared to be chiefly alder or hornbeam, both of 

 which blacken in a solution of copperas*. 



* Philos, Transact. No. 325. 



