HtTMAN BONES IN PEA.T. — INUNDATIONS OF SAND. 329 



Castleton, in Derbyshire ; they were overtaken by a great fall of 

 snow, and both perished : their bodies were not found till the 3d of 

 May, in the same year ; and being then offensive, the coroner order- 

 ed them to be buried on the spot in the peat. They lay undisturb- 

 ed twenty-eight years and nine months, when the curiosity of some 

 countrymen induced them to open their graves. The bodies ap- 

 peared quite fresh, the skin was fair and of its natural colour, and 

 the flesh as soft as that of persons newly dead. They were after- 

 wards frequently exposed as curiosities until in the year 1716, when 

 ihey were buried by order of the man's descendants. At that time 

 Dr. Bourne, of Chesterfield, who examined the bodies, says the man 

 was perfect, his beard was strong, the hair of his head was short, 

 and his skin hard and of a tanned leather colour, like the liquor he 

 was lying in. The body of the woman was more injured, having 

 been more frequently exposed ; the hair was like that of a living per- 

 son. Mr. Wormwald, the minister of Hope, was present when they 

 were removed : the man's legs, which had never before been uncov- 

 ered, were quite fair when the stockings were drawn off, and the 

 joints played freely without the least stiffness." 



In the beginning of the last century, the perfect body of a man, in 

 the ancient Saxon costume, was discovered in peat, at Hatfield Chase, 

 in Yorkshire : it soon perished on exposure to the air. 



Extensive tracts of cultivated ground are sometimes converted into 

 sandy deserts, by the drifting of sea-sand inland. The process by 

 which this is effected, is taking place, at present, in many situations. 

 During very high winds, the sand is driven from the sea-shore to a 

 certain distance, leaving an elevated ridge at the further boundary of 

 the drift. Succeeding winds blow the sand forward, and at the same 

 time bring fresh sand from the shore to supply its place. In the 

 sixth volume of the Transactions of the Irish Academy, an account 

 is given of the encroachment of the sand, over some parts of Ireland. 

 Trees, houses, and even villages, have been surrounded or covered 

 with sand, during the last century. In the vicinity of sandy deserts, 

 the sand is also encroaching on the habitable land. The loose sands 

 of Libya are thus spreading over the valley that borders the Nile, 

 and burying the monuments of art and the vestiges of former cultiva- 

 tion. From a similar cause, the country immediately round Palmy- 

 ra, that once supplied a crowded population with food, now scarcely 

 affords a few withered plants, to the camel of the wandering Arab. 



A sandy inundation on the north coast of Cornwall, was mention- 

 ed Chap. I. p. 14. This sand, which is composed of fragments of 

 shells and coral, is in some parts cemented into sandstone, by water 

 infiltrating from the slate-rocks : it is similar in appearance to the re- 

 cent sandstone of Guadaloupe, in which human skeletons have been 

 found : the latter is a very common sandstone in the West Indies ; it 

 increases rapidly, and the land gained from the sea, which forms 

 some of the plains of St. Domingo, is composed of it. A concreted 



42 



