Page:A Treatise on Geology, volume 2.djvu/80

 66 Dutch River, one of the old channels, which entered the Aire, being now nearly filled up. In the beds of the rivers, below the marshland, and all round to the highlands of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, are found "vast multitudes of the roots and trunks of trees of all sizes, great and small, and of most of the sorts that this island either formerly did, or that at present it does, produce; as firs, oaks, birch, beech, yew, thorn, willow, ash, &c.; the roots of all or most of which stand in the soil in their natural position as thick as ever they could grow, as the trunks of most of them lie by their proper roots. Most of the large trees lie along about a yard from their roots (to which they evidently belonged, both by their situation and the sameness of the wood), with their tops commonly north-east; though, indeed, the smaller trees lie almost every way across the former, some over and others under them." A third part of the trees were of the fir tribe (some 30 yards long and more), and in such condition as to be sold for masts and keels for ships; oak, black as ebony, abounded, 35 yards and more long, and useful in carpentry; ash trees were the only ones found decayed. "Some of the fir trees, after they were fallen, have shot up large branches from their sides, which have grown up to the height and bulk of considerable trees." (Hutton's Abridgment, Phil. Trans. vol. xxii.)

Many of the trees, and especially the fir trees, have been burnt, sometimes quite through; others chopped, squared, bored through, or split, with large wooden wedges and stones in them, and broken axe-heads, somewhat like sacrificing axes in shape, and this at depths, and under circumstances, which exclude all supposition of their being touched since the destruction of the forest. "Near a large root in the parish of Hatfield were found eight or nine coins of some of the Roman emperors, but exceedingly defaced with time; and it is very observable, that, on the confines of this low country, between Burningham and Brumley in Lincolnshire, are several great hills of loose sand, under which, as they are yearly