96 



Shannon side, in which bog the turf diggers do many times find whole 

 fir trees, deep in the ground : whether it be that those trees being 

 fallen, are by degrees sunk deeper and deeper, or that the earth 

 in length of time be grown over them*. 



Not only the presence of fossil trees in beds of turf, but also the 

 existence of this substance at a prodigious height, is related, by 

 Villars, professor of natural history of Grenoble, in a paper read 

 before the National Institute of France. He relates, that on the 

 mountain of Lans, in the canton of Oisau, in the department of 

 Isere, he discovered a bed of turf at between seven and eight thou- 

 sand feet above the level of the sea, and at nearly three thousand 

 feet above the most elevated line at which any trees grow at pre- 

 sent. The trees were not so much changed, but that the roots and 

 parts of the trunks were plainly distinguishable, shewing that they 

 were mountain-ash, birch, and the common larch; the two first of 

 which only, at present, grow in that neighbourhood. 



Similar instances of the existence of beds of this substance, on 

 very high mountains, we have, as has been already remarked, in 

 various parts of the world. In Scotland, it has been particularly 

 noticed: where also a very curious circumstance is observable, the 

 existence of two beds of turf separated by several strata of a con- 

 siderable degree of thickness. My much esteemed friend, Mr. 

 Wakelin Welch, of Exmouth, Devonshire, informs me, that he has 

 seen in the mountains of Scotland, two beds of turf, with several 

 intervening strata; that stratum which lay immediately over the 

 lowest bed of turf, containing a considerable proportion of shells, 

 intermixed with sand. A remarkable instance of this kind occurred 

 in the sinking of a well at Amsterdam, where, in the course of se- 

 venty-three feet, turf was found to occur twice, a variety of strata 

 intervening. This account which I found among the manuscript 

 papers of the Royal Society is as follows -j- : 



*The Natural History of Ireland, by Dr. Gerard Boate, 1652, p. 63. 

 t Mr. Ayscough's Catalogue, 698, 5. 



