CHAPTER III. 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT FORESTS BURIED IN THE GROUND 

 AND SUBMERGED IN THE SEA. 



In a preceding chapter it has been stated, that in the 

 neighbourhood of Dregg — a well-to-do village in Cumber- 

 land, the name of which is apparently a corruption of 

 Dericht or Drigh—a, name given in Irish and in Scotch to 

 the oak — the remains of ancient forests have at times been 

 discovered in cutting drains. This is by no means a rare 

 occurrence ; and by articles of man's making found in 

 some cases overlying or underlying the buried^wood, from 

 the age to which these articles belong, a plausible conjec- 

 ture may be formed of the age in which the wood was 

 submerged or buried ; and from the same and other indi- 

 cations something may be learned of the former condition 

 of the locality. 



We thus learn that the forests whose remains are so 

 preserved must have perished long before those, the sites 

 of which have been spoken of in the preceding chapter. 



Section I. — Facts and Theories. 



In Evelyn's " Silva " mention is made of an oak tree 

 120 feet in length, 12 feet in diameter at the largest end, 

 10 in the middle, and 6 at the smallest end, having been 

 found in Hatfield level by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden. 



" Hatfield Chase, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was 

 one of the largest in England, containing above 180,000 

 acres. One half was a complete morass ; but it was re- 



