I2 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
from north to south. This royalty consists entirely of sand 
covered with heath and fern ; but is somewhat diversified with 
hills and dales, without having one standing tree in the whole 
extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many 
bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees ; 
though Dr. Plot says positively, that “there never were any 
fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the southern counties.” 
But he was mistaken: for I myself have seen cottages on the 
verge of this wild district whose timbers consisted of a black 
hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners assured me 
they procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or 
some such instruments: but the peat is so much cut out, and 
the moors have been so well examined, that none has been 
found of late.’ Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces 
of fossil wood of a paler color, and softer nature, which the 
inhabitants called fir: but, upon a nice examination, and trial 
by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them; and there- 
1 Old people have assured me, that on a winter’s morning they have 
discovered these trees, in the bogs, by the hoar frost, which lay longer over 
the space where they are concealed than in the surrounding morass. Nor 
does this seem to be a fanciful notion, but consistent with true philosophy. 
Dr. Hales saith, “That the warmth of the earth, at some depth under 
ground has an influence in promoting a thaw, as well as the change of the 
weather from a freezing to a thawing state, is manifest from this observa- 
tion, viz., Nov. 29th, 1731, a little snow having fallen in the night, it was, by 
eleven the next morning, mostly melted away on the surface of the earth, 
except in several places in Bushy Park, where there were drains dug and 
covered with earth, on which the snow continued to lie, whether those ~ 
drains were full of water or dry; as also where elm-pipes lay under ground: 
a plain proof this, that those drains intercepted the warmth of the earth 
from ascending from greater depths below them; for the snow lay where 
the drain had more than four feet depth of earth over it. It continued 
also to lie on thatch, tiles, and the tops of walls.”,— See Hale’s Hema- 
Statics, p. 360. QUERY: Might not such observations be reduced to domestic 
use, by promoting the discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about 
houses ; and in Roman stations and camps lead to the finding of pave- 
ments, baths and graves, and other hidden relics of curious antiquity? 
