548 IMBEDDING OF THE EEilAINS OF MAN AND [Ch. XLYII. 



and overturned the vessel, so that it instantly disappeared. 

 After the tide had ebbed, the schooner was so totally buried 

 in the sand, that the taffrel or upper rail over the stern was 

 alone visible.^ We are informed by Leigh that, on drain- 

 ing Martin Mere, a lake eighteen miles in circumference, in 

 Lancashire, a bed of marl was laid dry, wherein no fewer 

 than eight canoes were found imbedded. In figure and 

 dimensions they were not unlike those now used in America. 

 In a morass about nine miles distant from this mere a whet- 

 stone and an axe of mixed metal were dug up.f In Ayrshire 

 also, three canoes were found in Loch Doon early in the 

 present century ; and during the year 1831 four others, each 

 hewn out of separate oak trees. They were 23 feet in leno-th 

 21 in depth, and nearly 4 feet in breadth at the stern. In 

 the mud which filled one of them was found a war-club of 

 oak and a stone battle-axe. A canoe of oak was also found 



marl 



t 



Manner 



It is 



extremely possible that tlie submerged woodwork of sliips 

 which have sunk where the sea is two or three miles deep has 

 undergone greater chemical changes in an equal space of 

 time than in the cases above mentioned ; for the experiments 

 of Scoresby show that wood may at certain depths be impreg- 

 nated in a single hour with salt water, so that its specific 

 gravity is entirely altered. (See above, p. 525.) It may often 

 happen that springs charged with carbonate of lime, silex, 



mineral ingredients, may 



may 



with the lapidifying liquid, whether calcareous or siliceous, 



decay commences. The conversion, also, 



smallest 



'mous 



pressure. But the change of the timber into lignite or coal 

 would not prevent the original form of a ship from being dis- 

 tinguished ; for as we find, in strata of the carboniferous era. 



^ Silliman's Geol. Lectures, p- 78, 

 who cites Penn. 



F 



t Leigh's Lancashire, p. 17, a. d. 

 1700. 



I Geol. Trans., second series, vol. ii. 

 p. 87. For buried canoes near Glasgow 

 see ' Antiquity of Man,' p. 48. 



' 



t 



4 

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