306 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1772. 



Mr. W' endeavoured to guess at the depth of the moss on the plain, by a 

 large thorn, which stands in the middle of it, and which is buried to above the 

 division of the branches. The farmers told him, that it stood upon a rising, 

 more than 6 feet above the general level of the plain : and that it was upwards 

 of 9 feet high, of clear stem. By this account, great part of the plain must be 

 covered 1 5 feet deep with the moss : and near the farm called Gap, there were 

 some considerable hollows, where they think the moss, at present, lies full 30 

 feet deep. The tallest hedges on the land are all covered over the top. The 

 houses are not so much buried, because they stood mostly on the higher parts 

 of the fields; and towards the extremities of the moss, he observed it, in many 

 places, not above 3 or 4 feet deep, owing likewise to the rising of the ground. 



The gut through which the whole of the moss flowed that covered the plain, 

 is only about 50 yards wide, and the gully near a quarter of a measured mile 

 long. The brook being stopped up by the moss, has now formed a lake. 



About 400 acres of the flow, next the place of its evacuation, appear to have 

 sunk from 5 to 25 feet: and this subsidence has occasioned great fissures on 

 those parts of the moss which refused to sink. These fissures are from 4 to 8 

 feet wide, and as much in depth. The surface of the flow, consisting of heath 

 and coarse grass, was torn away in large pieces, which still lie on the surface of 

 the new moss, some of them from 20 to 50 feet long. But the greater part of 

 the surface of the flow remained, and only subsided ; the moss, rendered thin 

 by the flood, running away from under it. 



Looking over the Solway moss, at the village of Longtown, where there is a 

 bridge on the Esk, they formerly saw only the tops of the trees at Gratney, a 

 house of the Marquis of Annandale's, 4 miles distant; but now they see them 

 almost to the ground. And looking over it, in another direction, they now see 

 two farm-towns of Sir Wm. Maxwel's, which were not before visible. So that 

 the ridge of the flow or moss seems to have subsided about 25 feet. 



Xn. On a New Species of Oak. By John Zephaniah Holwel, Esq., F. R. S. 

 Dated Exeter, Feb. 24, 1772. p. 128. 



About 7 years back, Mr. Lucombe, of St. Thomas, sowed a parcel of acorns, 

 saved from a tree of his own growth, of the iron or wainscot species : when they 

 came up, he observed one among them that kept its leaves throughout the win- 

 ter: struck with the phenomenon, he cherished, and paid particular attention 

 to it, and propagated, by grafting, some thousands from it, which Mr. H. had 

 the pleasure of seeing, 8 days ago, in high flourishing beauty and verdure, not- 

 withstanding the severity of the winter. Its growth is straight, and handsome 

 as a fir, its leaves evergreen, and the wood is thought, by the best judges, in 

 hardness and strength to exceed all other oak. It makes but one shoot in the 



