502 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



peat bore some trees of considerable size. The promontory became 

 an islet, and this has been washed away by the waves of the lake, 

 on which I have seen a heavy sea often rise as rapidly as has been 

 noticed in many other lakes all over the world (from Lough Gill 

 to the Lake of Kashmir, or in the opposite direction). 



Now, taking this wasting by wave action of the boggy margin 

 of the lake into consideration, in discussing the problem of the 

 sunken trees with Captain Gethin's steward (Sergeant Eoss) , whilst 

 fishing off " Poolnaperches," one day last summer, he seemed to 

 me to hit upon an explanation which would account most satisfac- 

 torily for the submerged forest trees of Aughenagh Point, and 

 may be capable of a wider application in many similar cases of 

 such submergence. We both observed that the stools of the old, 

 as well as those of the modern, trees in these bogs, spreading their 

 roots horizontally, retained their position thus until the boggy 

 ground they grew in had been almost entirely removed. Deprived 

 of the leverage which their stems — previously broken off — would 

 have given, they had less to disarrange their natural pose ; and 

 thus, when some storm of greater force than usual acted, the 

 retaining roots snapped or drew, and each water-logged mass sub- 

 sided to the bottom, settling upon its broadest surface, still in its 

 natural position of growth; so that afterwards, looking down 

 through the water, the trees would appear to have grown where 

 seen, though entirely beneath the water of the lake, and associated 

 in cases with a recomposed peaty deposit. 



As to the extent to which this action may have affected the 

 shores of Lough Arrow, Sergeant Eoss further stated that, under 

 a particular effect of light, upon a stormy day, he had seen from 

 Ballindoon House, which stands high upon one of the drift hills, 

 a long, dark channel, reaching sinuously from the river at Bally- 

 rush through the middle of the lake, between Ballindoon and 

 Bell's Island opposite. The lake, at its lower end, from one side 

 to the other across this channel, appears to have both boggy banks 

 and a boggy bottom. Hence it is not improbable the channel he 

 saw may have marked a former bed of the river, before the bog on 

 each side had been eroded away; and the definition of this channel 

 may have been aided by the storm having disturbed the marly 

 substratum that not unfrequently underlies our Irish bogs. 



I am not quite prepared to say how far these observations may 



