96 
Not only the presence of fossil trees in beds of turf, but also the 
existence of this substance at a prodigious height, is related, by 
Villars, professor of natural history of Grenoble, in a paper read 
before the national institute of France. He relates, that on the 
mountain of Lans, in the canton of Oisau, in the department of 
Isere, he discovered a bed of turf at between seven and eight thousand 
feet above the level of the sea, and at nearly three thousand feet 
above the most elevated line at which any trees grow at present. 
The trees were not so much changed, but that the roots and parts 
of the trunks were plainly distinguishable, shewing that they were 
mountain-ash, birch, and the common larch ; the two first of which, 
only, at present, grow in that neighbourhood. 
Similar instances of the existence of beds of this substance, on 
very high mountains, we have, as has been already remarked, in 
various parts of the world. In Scotland, it has been particularly 
noticed : where also a very curious circumstance is observable, the 
existence of two beds of turf separated by several strata of a con- 
siderable degree of thickness. My much esteemed friend, Mr. 
Wakelin Welch, of Exmouth, Devonshire, informs me, that he has 
seen, in the mountains of Scotland, two beds of turf, with several 
intervening strata; that stratum which lay immediately over the 
lowest bed of turf, containing a considerable proportion of shells, 
intermixed with sand. A remarkable instance of this kind occurred 
in the sinking of a well at Amsterdam, where, in the course of se- 
venty-three feet, turf was found to occur twice, a variety of strata 
intervening. This account, which I found among the manuscript 
papers of the royal society, is as follows* : 
* Mr. Ayscough’s Catalogue, 69S, 5. 
