224 
informed that one of the roebuck was got out at Hook Bridge. 
Mollusca are entirely absent so far as I have seen, nor is this 
surprising, for they seem to be equally absent in the living 
state from the present moorlands. Probably this absence of 
mollusca is due to the want of lime ; for on the warp lands 
there are plenty close to the edge of the moor, and their shells 
are abundant in certain Peaty deposits near the Limestone, of 
which I shall have to speak. The interesting point about 
this Peat bed is that the whole thickness has been formed 
apparently during the historic period. This is shown by the 
fact that the trees which lie beneath it have been felled by 
the agency of man, as proved by the marks of tools and of 
fire on the stumps and felled timber. Nor could their de- 
struction have been the work of savage man, for the forest 
extended over a considerable area, at least 10 miles in dia- 
meter ; the trees were, many of them, of large size, and stood 
close together — in the angle between the North Eastern and 
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways at Goole, where the 
forest bed is well shown by the removal of the top soil to form 
the embankments, I counted the stumps of 21 good-sized 
trees in a space 20 yards square — and although the marks 
which the stumps bear are those of rougher and less efficient 
tools than we possess at the present day, the clearing of such a 
forest must have been the work of a powerful and enterprising 
people. The common belief is that it was the work of the 
Romans, done to dislodge the British tribes; this opinion 
was propounded by Abraham de la Pryme, of Thorne, in 
the latter part of the 17th Centur}^, and I see no reason to 
doubt its correctness ; but the question is one for the Anti- 
quary, rather than for the Geologist, and I do not feel com- 
petent to enter into it.* The felling of the forest has been the 
cause of the development of the Peat, partly by interfering 
* Camden reports that " it is said, in the cut river to Gowie, there was found 
a Roman coin, either of Domitian or Trajan." 
