254 SYLVAN WINTER. 



siderable distances under the surface, it is tlie 

 slow movements of land and water that have 

 given rise to the burying of thorn in shallows of 

 land, if that expression may be used. By the 

 slow subsidence of land, dry ground would be 

 turned into marsh, and the conditions under 

 which its flora had existed being wholly changed, 

 the trees and other plants that had grown on the 

 dryer soil would perish. As the subsidence con- 

 tinued, the marsh would become deep bog, and 

 a new order of vegetation would spring up, but 

 vegetation of a small size — small enough, indeed, 

 to float on the bog's surface. Slowly, but surely, 

 the undermined trees, already destroyed by their 

 uncongenial soil and circumstances, would sink 

 in the depths of the soft mud of the morass. 

 Lower and lower they would sink, until the top- 

 most branches had disappeared. But oftentimes 

 the process of disappearance is hastened by the 

 fall of the tree, when the abnormal moistening of 

 the soil about its roots had caused them to loosen 

 their hold. Falling thus horizontally into the 

 bog, the tree would speedily be covered by its 

 substance, and the final process hastened. 



