ON THE ALLUVIUM OF THE BEDFORD LEVEL. 
79 
in high preservation, particularly that of the oak, which has been, 
from time immemorial, converted into rafters and beams for ar- 
chitectural purposes. 
On the precise situation in which the trees are discovered, all 
authorities, from the earliest to the present, agree ; but, on the 
direction in which they lie, there is great discrepancy of opinion ; 
from my own inquiries I am decidedly of opinion that they lie 
in all directions. On these points I will now cite a few authori- 
ties. And first, in regard to the stratum in which they have 
gro^n. Sir William Dugdale, says, that in the late digging of 
those channels and drains, as have been made for the exsiccation 
thereof, great numbers of such trees, of several kinds, have been 
found ; most of oak and fir, and few of them severed from their 
roots; but of such as be so severed, the roots are observed to 
stand in the firm earth below the moor.'^ He also says with re- 
ference to the direction in which the trunks of the fallen trees 
lie, Trees were discovered lying near their roots, and the bodies 
for the most part north-west from the roots.'^ 
Pennant, in his preface to the third vol. of Arctic Zoology, 
after stating that the " great level, had been originally a wooded 
country, says, " Whole forests of fii's and oaks have been found 
in digging far beneath the moor on the solid ground; oaks 
fifteen feet in girth, and ten yards long, mostly burnt at the 
bottoms, the ancient method of felling them; multitudes of 
others entirely rooted up, as appears by the force of the sea 
bursting in and overwhelming this whole tract, and covering 
it with silt or mud, which it carried with it from time to 
time.'^ 
The Rev. N. De la Pyme writes, " In the beds of the rivers, 
below the marsh land, and all round to the highlands of Lin- 
colnshire and Yorkshire, are found vast multitudes of the roots 
and trunks of trees of all sizes, great and small, and of most of 
the sorts that this island either formerly did, or that at present 
it does produce ; as firs, oaks, birch, beach, yew, thorn, willow, 
