74 
BOG TIMBER. 
small oak, which had apparently been sever¬ 
ed from the ground by an axe, was ponder¬ 
ous and black as ebony. 
The quaint Evelyn says, ‘‘ That incompa¬ 
rable Naturalist, the learned Dr. Merrett, in 
his Pinax, speaks of several places of this 
nation where subterraneous trees are found, 
as namely in Cornwall, Flints, Pembroke¬ 
shire, Cheshire, Cumberland, Anglesea, and 
several of our Euro-boreal tracts, and are 
called Noah’s ark. By Chatnesse, in Lan¬ 
cashire, (says Camden,) the low mossy 
ground was no very long time since carried 
away by an impetuous flood, and in that 
place now lies a low irriguous vale, where 
many prostrate trees have been digged out, 
these trees were some think carried away in 
times past by some accident of inundation, 
or by waters undermining the ground, till 
their own weight and the wind’s bowed them 
down, and overwhelmed them in the mud : 
for ’tis observed that these trees are nowhere 
found but in boggy places; but that the burn¬ 
ing of these trees so very bright, should be an 
argument they were fir, is not necessary, 
since the bituminous quality of such earth 
t 
