VOL, XXII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 627 



though in the time of the C^sars it was nothing but a great lake, are found 

 at 30, 40, and 50 feet deep, the soil of a low marshy country, full of sedge, 

 reeds, shrubs, roots, trees, nuts, ears of corn, leaves of trees, branches and 

 boughs of oaks, elms, wallnuts, ashes, willows, and the very trees themselves 

 some broken, some whole, some standing upright, some lying at their length, 

 &c. with old coins of the Roman emperors, old marbles and stones squared, 

 cut, carved, and wrought with the hands of men, &c. 



But now, seeing that we find roots and trees, with other things that are 

 common to these levels, not only there, but also in other countries, it yet re- 

 mains to inquire, how all this comes to pass, and what reasons and causes can 

 be given for it. I know, that most men are for referring all this to Noah's 

 flood. But if so, how comes it, that the trees and their roots lie so near each 

 other, and why lengthwise, from south west to north east ? Why some of them 

 burnt, others chopped, some split, others squared, and some bored through ? 

 Why the soil at the very bottom of a large river lies in ritlge and furrow, and 

 why are the coins of the Roman emperors found in those places. Sec? For 

 me, I humbly conceive, that all those trees grew in the very places where they 

 are now found, both in this country and elsewhere. Against which I know of 

 only two objections, of any consequence. ]. That Caesar expressly says, that 

 no fir-trees in his time grew in Britain. But this is nothing at all to the 

 purpose: for those trees that are called firs by the vulgar, from their near 

 conformity and likeness to that tree, are well known by all learned men, by 

 the redness, the resinous nature of the wood, the gracile cones hanging down- 

 wards, &c. to be the true pitch-tree, of which there are such great plenty in 

 Norway, Sweden, and other countries of the north, and of which there are 

 whole woods at this very day in Scotland, and upon a hill at Wareton in 

 Staffordshire, they grow wild to the present time. Also in an old deed relating 

 to this very chace, fir-trees or bushes are mentioned as growing here and there, 

 about 300 years since. 



2. That those sorts of trees grow always on high mountains and rocks, and 

 never thrive on such low grounds and morasses, as these are, where we now 

 find them buried. But though they do, in all cold countries of the north, 

 thrive best on the hardest rocks and mountains, yet are they sometimes 

 seen even large and plentifully in the low morasses of Liefland, Courland. 

 Pomerania, and other countries thereabouts; and in the low forests and woods; 

 for the truth is, that these stately trees chiefly delight to grow in a sandy soil ; 

 and if it lie never so high, or never so low, there they will grow, and there 

 it is natural to them. It was lately observed in digging the pit of a great 

 decoy in these levels^ that the roots of the firs always stood in the sand, and 



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