HKB
which the trunks, boughs, and leaves do so exactly appear, as to distinguish their several species, with the series of their leaves yearly falling; of which see Boetius de Boot.
Dr. Plot in his Nat. Hist. of Oxford and Staffordshires mentions divers subterraneous oaks, black as ebony, and of mineral substance for hardness; (see cap. 3. oak) quite through the whole substance of the timber, caus’d (as he supposes, and learnedly evinces) by a vitriolic humour of the earth; of affinity to the nature of the ink-galls, which that kind of tree produces: Of these he speaks of some found sunk under the ground, in an upright and growing posture, to the perpendicular depth of sixty foot; of which one was three foot diameter, of an hardness emulating the politest ebony: But these trees had none of them their roots, but were found plainly to have been cut off by the kerf: There were great store of hasel-nuts, whose shells were as sound as ever, but no kernel within. It is there the inquisitive author gives you his conjecture, how these deep interments happen’d; namely, by our ancesters (many ages since) clearing the ground for tillage, and when wood was not worth converting to other uses, digging trenches by the sides of many trees, in which they buried some; and others they slung into quagmires, and lakes to make room for more profitable agriculture: But I refer you to the chapter. In the mean time, concerning this mossie-wood (as they usually term it, because, for the most part, dug-up in mossie and moory-bogs where they cut for turff) it is highly probable (with the learned Mr. Ray) that these places were many ages since, part of firm-land covered with wood, afterwards undermined, and overwhelmed by the violence of the sea, and so continuing submerg’d, till the rivers brought down earth, and mud enough to cover the trees, filling up the shallows, and restoring them to the terra-firma again, which he illustrates from the like accident upon the coast of Suffolk, about Dunwich, where the sea does at this day, and hath for many years past, much incroach’d upon the land, undermining, and subverting by degrees, a great deal of high-ground; so as by ancient writings it appears, a whole wood of more than a mile and half, at present is so far within the sea: Now if in succeeding ages (as probable it is enough) the sea shall by degrees be fill’d up, either by its own working, or by earth brought down by land-floods, still subsiding to the bottom, and surmounting the tops of these trees, and so the space again added to the firm-land; the men that shall then live in those parts, will, it’s likely, dig-up these trees, and as much wonder how they came there, as we do at present those we have been speaking of.