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real pines is so great, that the peat-pits are called by the common 
people keenen, kien-homen, or kien-hout ; Men, or keen, being the 
word which, in the German language, signifies pine. 
In a similar manner he endeavours to account for the pine nuts 
or cones, which are found amongst the peat. If they be real pine 
nuts, they must, he says, astonish every one ; for although the pine 
is found in considerable numbers near to Breda, in Brabant, yet it 
is seldom found in any other part of Belgium. 
Although he cannot but admit, that, formerly, pines might have 
grown on these spots, and have been there overthrown and pre- 
served, with their nuts, from putrefaction, by the including matter ; 
yet he cannot allow that all those resinous balls, mixed with, and 
resembling those bodies, which he admits to be pine nuts, can pos- 
sibly be real nuts ; but he rather supposes them to be of the same 
nature with other bituminovis masses, some of which, not unlike to 
walnuts, and others to eggs, are sometimes met with whilst digging. 
The only difierence, he thinks, is that, in the seeming pine nuts, 
there is an admixture of sulphur and other things, which render 
them of a resinous nature, similar to the real cones. 
Some also have attributed the formation of peat to the sinking 
of large floating islands, such as are now frequent in several parts 
of Holland, and such as have been known to have existed in very 
early ages ; Seneca and Pliny having noticed the existence of a lake, 
on which was a floating island, near to Cutila, a town of the Sabines*. 
Dr. Plott, in his Natural History of Staffordshire, relates, that at 
that period there were two floating islands on Kinson Pool, which 
were about twenty feet broad, and about thirty, or perhaps forty, 
feet long. 
The utility of this substance, in those parts in which coal is not 
dug, has been already noticed. But the thick acrid smoke, and the 
* Senecas Natur. Quest, lib. iii. cap. 16. Plin. lib. iii. cap. 12. lib. xxxi. cap. 2. 
