178 THE FORESTS OP ENGLAND. 



now ooze out from the moist beds ; and the subsiding 

 force would act more powerfully in the absence of, the 

 water which filled every pore. All the strata above low- 

 water mark would thus collapse; and the surface of the 

 marsh, instead of remaining at its original height, would 

 sink below the level of the sea. In consequence of this 

 drainage, produced by the ebbing of the tide on those 

 marshes, the original barriers of which have been des- 

 troyed, there is no difficulty in accounting for the depres- 

 sion of the surface of a marsh many feet lower than its 

 original level; nor in explaining that Neptune now 

 triumphs where Silvanus reigned, and that the sprightly 

 Nereids now occupy the dwelling of their sister Naiads." 



The buried woods and trSes in many cases may require 

 some other and different suppositions to account for their 

 existence where they have been found ; but more interest- 

 ing to us in our present study are the indications which 

 may be obtained of the period at which the woods were 

 submerged of buried. 



Section II. — Indications of the Age in which 

 Buried Woods and trees must have Fallen. 



We lack indications of the time at which the trees 

 buried in the bog land of Holderness, and the submerged 

 trees on the coast of Lincolnshire, were destroyed. But we 

 have indications of a village having existed in the vicinity 

 of the submarine forest on the Cheshire coast, and from 

 articles of ornament and of domestic use which from time 

 to time have been found along the coast, something may 

 be learned in regard to the age in which the village 

 existed; and thus we may learn something of the age of 

 the forest. 



It may be premised that all our coal beds are the meta- 

 morphosed remains of pre-Adamic woods and forests. 

 Petrified trees of a later growth are not uncommon. Such 



