67 
loose sand, which, as they are yearly worn and blown away, there 
are discovered under them many roots of great firs or pitch trees, 
with the impresses of the axe as fresh upon them as if they had but 
been cut down a few weeks, which I have several times, with plea- 
sure, taken notice of, as I have rode that way. 
Hazel nuts and acorns have frequently been found, at the bottom 
of the soil of those levels and moors ; and fir or pitch tree apples, or 
cones, in great quantities, by whole bushels together. And at the 
very bottom of a new river or drain, that the drainers cut, (almost 
100 yards wide, and four or five miles long) were found old trees, 
squared and cut, rails, stoups, bars, old links of chains, horses’ heads, 
an old axe, somewhat like a battle-axe, with two or three coins of the 
Emperor Vespasian : but that which is more observable, is, that the 
very ground, at the bottom of the river, was found, in some places, 
to lie in rigg and fur, manifesting thereby, that it had been tilled 
and ploughed in former days. 
From an oak tree having been found in these moors forty yards 
long, four yards diametrically thick at the great end, three yards 
and a foot in the middle, and two yards over at the small end ; and 
which, by moderate computation, appeared to have been as long 
again : and from a pitch or fir tree having been found thirty-six yards 
long, the computed length of which might be fifteen yards more, he 
observes, there is reason to suppose, that the trees of these levels 
must have been exceeding great. 
The Rev. W. Derham relates, that many subterraneous trees M’^ere 
laid bare by a breach in the Thames wall ; when, by the violence of 
the water, a passage was torn up, an hundred yards wide, and twenty 
feet deep. Mr. Derham says, we discover these trees all along the 
Thames side, over against Rainham, Wennington, Purfleet, and other 
places. The trees appeared to be chiefly alder or hornbeam, both of 
which blacken in a solution of copperas*. 
* Philos. Transact. No. 325. 
