620 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I70I. 



served his shape entire, but within, his flesh, and most of his bones were 

 consumed. 



To illustrate and render more intelligible this strange subject of subterraneous 

 trees, we may here advert a little to what has been observed in other places 

 and countries. Cambden and others have told us, and it is a very common 

 and well known thing, that most of the great morasses, mosses, fens, and bogs, 

 in Somersetshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Westmoreland, Yorkshire, Stafford- 

 shire, Lincolnshire, and other counties in England, are full of the roots and 

 trunks of large trees, most of which are pitch or fir, and that they have the 

 same positions and impressions of the fire and axe on them, as those above- 

 mentioned. 



Giraldus Cambrensis tells us, that in King Henry the 2d's days, by the force 

 of extraordinary storms, the sands were so much driven off the sea-shore in 

 Pembrokeshire, that under them were discovered great numbers of roots and 

 trunks of trees in their natural positions, with the strokes of the axe as fresh 

 upon them, as if they had been cut down only yesterday, with a very black 

 earth, and some blocks like ebony. And the like were discovered also 

 at Neugall, in the same county, in 159O, and in Cardiganshire, and in other 

 places since. 



Dr. Plot mentions the like roots and trees, found in Shebben-Pool, the old 

 Pewit-Pool, and at Layton, and other places in Staffordshire ; and from their 

 natural situations he rightly concludes, that they certainly grew there. 



Dr. Leigh, in his History of Cheshire, observes, that in draining Martin 

 Meer, there was found multitudes of the roots and trunks of large pitch trees, 

 in their natural positions, with great quantities of their cones, and 8 canoes, 

 such as the old Britons sailed in ; and in another moor was found a brass 

 kettle, beads of amber, a small mill-stone, the whole head of a Hippopotamus, 

 and human bodies entire and uncorrupted, as to outward appearance. Many 

 places too of the soil of Anglesea and Man, as also of the bogs of Ireland, 

 are likewise full of roots and trees. 



As to other countries, Verstegan tells us, that in many places of the moors 

 and morasses of the Netherlands, large fir-trees are commonly found, with 

 their tops lying to the north east, just as they dp in the levels of Hatfield chase. 

 And Helmont mentions the Peel there, a moss more than 9 miles broad. Also 

 M. De la Fer says, that trees and roots are also frequently found in the low 

 grounds ; and in the levels and morasses of France, Switzerland, and Savoy. 

 And lastly, Rammazzini assures us, that in the territories of Modena, which 

 are several miles long and broad, and at present a most fruitful dry country. 



