SUPERSTRATUM OF THE MOOR. 
19 
against granite as a soil for trees, resting on the 
mind, it cannot be overlooked how many tracts of 
country of the same kind, are now overspread by 
fine forests, (the Alps, Norway, &c.) ; young trees 
are known to spring up yearly on the moor, and, if 
the compactness of the rock be thought an 
hindrance to the maintenance of roots, it may be 
answered that oaks of superior size have never¬ 
theless been grown, and in some spots are still 
growing on this very tract, and that on greenstone, 
equally dense as granite, trees of splendid growth 
may be noticed; witness the beeches at Lyneham 
and elsewhere. 
With regard to superstratum it is probable that 
Dartmoor never boasted of much, the hardness of 
the stone and its upland situation being unfavorable 
to the accumulation of loose soil. Some have sup¬ 
posed that the moor is a denuded district, a tract 
washed of its clay or other earth, at the period of 
the Deluge ; the clay however seems to be limited 
to the schistlands,and those in its direct neighbour¬ 
hood, and if ever it had existed on Dartmoor it 
would certainly have left some slight traces there, 
to attest the event of a denudation, and which have 
not, so far as I know, been detected. As to the 
soil induced from the presence of a forest, this 
would assuredly diminish, when by the removal of 
the trees, the rock generally acquired a perpetual 
moisture, and a continued draining towards the 
vallies, took place over its whole surface. 
It is to be understood that the wooded, watered, 
and cultivated state of a country, act largely on 
its climate, while a climate being thus formed, it 
re-acts back again on those very conditions to which 
covered with straw,” and Strabo mentions them as “ wooden 
houses, circular in form with lofty conical roofs.” •From Tram, 
of Plymouth Inst.p. 193. 
B 2 
