306 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK I. been found Oaks five yards in compass, and fifteen in length, some of 

 -^^f^^ them erect, and standing- as they grew, in firm earth below the moors, 

 with abundance of Fir, which lie more stooping than the Oak, some 

 being thirty-six yards long besides the tops. And so great is the store of 

 these subterraneans, as the inhabitants have for divers years carried away 

 above two thousand cart-loads yearly : See " Dugdale's History of 

 Draining." This might be of good use for the like detections in Essex, 

 Lincolnshire, and places either low situate, or adjacent to the sea ; also 

 at Binfield-heath in Kent, &c. These trees were (some think) carried 

 away, in times past, by some accident of inundation, or by waters under- 

 mining the ground, till their own weight and the winds bowed them 

 down, and overwhelmed them in the mud : For it is observed, that these 

 trees are no where found so frequently as in boggy places. But that the 

 burning of these trees so very bright, should be an argument that they 

 were Fir, is not necessary, since the bituminous quality of such earth 

 may be imparted to them. There are in Cumberland, on the sea-shore, 

 trees sometimes discovered at low-water, and at other times, that lie 

 buried in the sand ; and in other mossy places of that country, it is re- 

 ported the people frequently dig up the bodies of vast trees without 

 boughs, and that by direction of the dew alone in summer ; for they ob- 

 serve it never lies upon that part under which those trees are interred. 

 These particulars I find noted by the ingenious author of the Britannia 

 Baconica. How vast a forest, and what goodly trees were once standing 

 in Holland, and those low countries, till about the year 860, when an 

 hurricane obstructing the mouth of the Rhine, near Catwic, made that 

 horrid devastation, good authors mention. And they do this day find 

 monstrous bodies and branches, (nay, w ith the very imts, most entire,) of 

 prostrate and buried trees, near to Veer, especially towards the south, 

 and at the bottom of the waters : Also near Bruges, in Flanders, whole 

 woods have been found twenty ells deep, in which the trunks, boughs, 

 and leaves do so exactly appear, as to distinguish their several species, , 

 with the series of their leaves yearly falling : Of which see Boetius de 

 Boot. 



Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Oxfordshire and Staffordshire, men- 

 tions divers subterraneous Oaks, black as Ebony, and of mineral substance 

 for hardness, quite through the whole substance of the timber, caused, 

 as he supposes, and learnedly evinces, by a vitriolic humour of the earth, 



