OF FOREST-TREES. 



307 



of affinity to the nature of the ink-galls which that kind of tree produces, qh xxii 

 Of these he speaks of some found sunk under the ground, in an upright '-^■v*^ 

 and growing posture, to the perpendicular depth of sixty feet, of which one 

 was three feet in diameter, of an hardness emulating the politest Ebony. 

 These trees had none of them their roots, but were found plainly to have 

 been cut off by the kerf. There were great store of Hasel-nuts, whose 

 shells were as sound as ever, but no kernel within. It is there the inqui- 

 sitive author gives you his conjecture how these deep interments hap- 

 pened ; namely, by our ancestors, many ages since, clearing the ground 

 for tillage, and, when wood was not worth converting to other uses, dig- 

 ging trenches by the sides of many trees, in which they buried some, and 

 others they flung into quagmires and lakes to make room for more pro- 

 fitable agriculture. In the mean time, concerning this mossy wood, as 

 they usually term it, because, for the most part, dug up in mossy and 

 moory bogs where they cut for turf, it is highly probable, with the learned 

 Mr. Ray, that these places were, many ages since, part of firm land 

 covered with wood, afterwards undermined and overwhelmed by the 

 violence of the sea, and so continuing submerged till the rivers brought 

 down earth and mud enough to cover the trees, filling up the shallows, 

 and restoring them to Terra Firma again : this he illustrates from the like 

 accident upon the coast of Suffolk, about Dunwich, where the sea conti- 

 nues at this day, as for many years past, to encroach upon the land, un- 

 dermining and subverting by degrees a great deal of high ground, so as 

 by ancient writings it appears a w^hole wood of more than a mile and a 

 half, at present is so far within the sea. Now, if, in succeeding ages, as 

 it is probable enough, the sea shall by degrees be filled up, either by its 

 own working, or by earth brought down by land-floods, still subsiding to 

 the bottom and surmounting the tops of these trees, and so the space 

 added again to the firm land, the men that shall then live in those parts 

 will, it is likely, dig up these trees, and as much wonder how they came 

 there, as w^e do at present those w^e have been speaking of. 



In the mean time, to put an end to the various conjectures concerning 

 the causes of so many trees being found submerged, for the most part at- 

 tributed to the destruction made by the Noatic inundation ; after all has 

 been said of what was found in the level of Hatfield, drained at the never- 

 to-be-forgotten charge and industry of Sir Cornelius Vermuiden, I think 

 there will need no more inquiry. For there were discovered trees, not 



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