84 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
wrote a Description of tlie Subterranean Forests of Hatfield 
Chace in Yorkshire^^ came to the conclusion "that the Romans 
were the destroyers of all the great woods and forests which we 
now find under ground in the bottom of moors and bogs 
and with regard to districts were the E-oman sway was impotent 
or unknown, as Wales, the Isle of Man and Ireland, the de- 
struction of many forests is charged on later conquerors. " See 
Phillips^s Geology, vol. 2 ; on this opinion I must remark, that 
as far as relates to the destruction of the forests in the "great 
level,^^ it is highly improbable that the immense number of trees 
which have been, and are continually met with under ground 
were levelled to the earth by man alone, although Tacitus in his 
life of Agricola says, "the Britons complained that their hands 
and bodies were worn out and consumed by the Romans in 
clearing the woods, and embanking the fens.^' 
That the Britons labored hard, there is no doubt, under their 
taskmasters, in raising the embankments necessary to the pro- 
tection of the fens from the irruptions of the Sea, and in felling 
many timbers, and clearing much ground ; still when we have 
on record, the destruction of whole forests at one "fell swoop'' 
by natural causes, as I will presently relate, I may venture at 
least to affirm, that in similar tornadoes, we have a cause more 
competent to the effect, than that of the labour of men's hands, 
had Britain at that period possessed a population equalling that 
of China. Mr. Lyell says, in his " principles of Geology," " We 
also learn that the overthrow of a forest by a storm, about the 
middle of the seventeenth century, gave rise to a peat moss near 
Lochbroom in Ross-shire, where in less than half a century 
after the fall of the trees, the inhabitants dug peat," and Dr. 
Walker mentions a similar change, when in the year 1756, the 
whole wood of Drumlanrig in Dumfriesshire was overset by the 
wind. But indeed vast numbers of the trees found underground 
in the " Level," particularly those associated Yath. the upper bed 
of peat, must have sprung from the s(>il during the period, in 
