OF SELBORNE 23 



to begin to the south, and so to proceed eastward, by the 

 parishes of Greatham, Lysse, Rogate, and Trotton, in the 

 county of Sussex ; by Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. 

 This royalty consists entirely of sand covered with heath 

 and fern ; but is somewhat diversified with hills and dales, 

 without having one standing tree in the whole extent. In 

 the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, 

 which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees ; 

 though Dr. Plot says positively,* that " there never were 

 any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the southern 

 counties." But he was mistaken : for I myself have seen 

 cottages on the verge of this wild district, whose timbers 

 consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, which 

 the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by 

 probing the soil with- spits, or some such instruments : but 

 the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so 

 well examined, that none has been found of late.f Besides 

 the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil-wood of a 



* See his Hist, of Staffordshire. 



t Old people have assured me, that on a winter's morning they 

 have discovered these trees, in the bogs, by the hoar frost, which 

 lay longer over the space where they were concealed, than on the 

 surrounding morass. Nor does this seem to be a fanciful notion, 

 but consistent with true philosophy. Dr. Hales saith, " That the 

 warmth of the earth, at some depth under ground, has an influence 

 in promoting a thaw, as well as the change of the weather from a 

 freezing to a thawing state, is manifest, from this observation, viz., 

 Nov. 29, 1731, a little snow having fallen in the night, it was, by 

 eleven the next morning, mostly melted away on the surface of the 

 earth, except in several places in Bushy Park, where there were 

 drains dug and covered with earth, on which the snow continued 

 to lie, whether those drains were fuU of water or dry ; as also where 

 elm-pipes lay under ground : a plain proof this, that those drains 

 intercepted the warmth of the earth from ascending from greater 

 depths below them : for the snow lay where the drain had more 

 than four feet depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie on 

 thatch, tiles, and the tops of walls." See Hales's Hxmaslcdics, 

 p. 360. Qusere. — Might not such observations be reduced to 

 domestic use, by promoting the discovery of old obhterated drains 

 and wells about houses ; and in Roman stations and camps lead 

 to the finding of pavements, baths and graves, and other hidden 

 reUcs of curious antiquity ? 



