682 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 17 1^. 



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

 places: and in the breach that happened at West-Thorrock, about 21 years 

 ago, they were washed out in as great numbers and of the same kind of wood, 

 as those found lately in Dagenham and Havering Levels. 



These last trees are of different sizes; some above a foot diameter, some less. 

 As I was rowed in a boat along the channel, I met with two of the less sort, 

 standing upright, in the same posture in which they grew ; their tops just above 

 low-water, and their bottoms, at least the bottom of the channel, at l6 feet 

 deep. We endeavoured to draw them out, but could not do it with all our 

 strength. They seemed to be about 2 inches diameter in their trunk, had some 

 of their boughs on, were dead, and probably, being young and light, escaped 

 the force of what threw the other more large and unwieldy ones down. Most 

 of the trees, that I met with, had their roots on, and many of them their 

 boughs, and some a part of their bark. There was only one that I perceived 

 had any signs of the ax, and its head had been lopped off. 



As I passed the channel which the water had torn up, I could see all along the 

 shores vast numbers of the stumps of those subterraneous trees, remaining in 

 the very same posture in which they grew, with their roots running some down, 

 some branching and spreading about in the earth, as trees growing in the earth 

 commonly do. Some of those stumps I thought had signs of the ax, and most 

 of them were flat at top, as if cut off at the surface of the earth : but being 

 rotten, and battered, I could not fully satisfy myself, whether the trees had 

 been cut or broken off. 



The soil in which all those trees grew, was a black, oozy earth, full of the 

 roots of reed ; on the surface of which oozy earth the trees lay prostrate, and 

 over them a covering of grey mould, of the same colour and consistence with 

 the dry sediment, or mud, which the water leaves behind it at this day. This 

 covering of grey earth is about 7 or 8 feet thick, in some places 12 feet or more, 

 in some less ; at which depths the trees generally lie. The trees lay in no kind 

 of order, but some this way, some that, and many of them across : only in one 

 or two places I observed they lay more orderly, with their heads for the most 

 part towards the north, as if they had been blown down by a southerly wind, 

 which exerts a pretty force on that shore. 



As to the age in which those trees were interred, it is hard to determine. 

 Many think they have lain in that state ever since Noah's flood. But though I 

 have not the least doubt but that at this day there are many remains of the spoils 

 of that deluge, even in the highest mountains, yet I rather think these trees to 

 be the ruins of some later age, occasioned by some extraordinary inundations of 

 the river Thames, or by some storms, which blow sharply on this shore. As 



