~. Andrews on Human Antiquities at Abbeville, de. 185 
century. He states that there has been no perceptible accretion 
to it from time immemorial, so far as the observation of the mod- 
ern inhabitants can determine, . He believes that had the growth 
erect where they grew, generally birches, or alders. ese 
§ were sometimes a meter (39°14 inches) in baighs, but 
ong un- 
covered in the damp air of a swamp without decay, it follows 
that all which are found standing erect in the peat, must have 
been covered to their present summits with the increase, before 
they had time to rot away. Applying Boucher de Perthes’s 
estimate of 14 to 2 inches growth of peat ina century, it would 
‘ollow that a stump one meter in height must have stood un- 
covered without decay from 1,950 to 2,600 years before the ac- 
cretion of peat overtopped it and secured its preservation, The 
absurdity of the idea is obvious at aglance. One hundred years 
1s a long duration to allow even an oak in such circumstances, 
three feet or more in a hundred years, This conclusion is con- 
‘d by the existence of numerous prostrate trunks. Some 
themselves by the force of their fall is not admissible, because 
no oak will bury itself by its fall in a soil solid enough for it 
to gow upon when alive. 
he remark of Boucher de Perthes, that the growth of the 
peat is so slow as to be wholly imperceptible to the modern 
inhabitants, is doubtless true and very y explained. The 
beds of the Somme belong to the class of forest peats, and not 
to that of the moss growths. Forest peats, as may be seen in 
