ing earth having been dissolved in the sulphuric acid, which is of ordinary occurrence in the peat of Yorkshire, and the residuary gelatine changed to leather by the tannin.
The prostration of the trees towards the north-east has been noticed by Verstegan and De Luc, in the morasses of the Netherlands and Germany. De Luc, speaking of the abundance of trees lying below the peat of the country near Bremervorde, attributes their direction from S.W. to N.E. to the prevalent winds and rains from the S.W.; he also notices the chopping and burning of the trees. (Lettres, torn, v.)
The conclusion of Mr. De la Pryme, "that the Romans were the destroyers of all the great woods and forests which we now find underground in the bottom of moors and bogs," has been generally adopted by geologists; and, with regard to districts where the Roman sway was impotent or unknown, as Wales, the Isle of Man, and Ireland, the destruction of many forests is charged on later conquerors.
If, from the contemplation of evidence concerning the historic date of subterranean forests furnished by the coins of Rome, and ruder works of earlier people, we turn to the monuments of nature, the remains of men and quadrupeds, which occasionally present themselves in drains and other excavations, we find the impression, that the overthrow of the forests took place in comparatively modern geological times, materially strengthened. For, while the bodies of men and women, which have been found in Solway Moss, in the bogs of Ireland, and other parts, agree with the evidence of coins, axes, and canoes, the bones of quadrupeds belong, almost in every instance, to existing species, as the red and fallow deer, wolf, beaver, horse, ox, and sheep; the insects and mollusca, and all the trees and plants, are of types yet living in the same vicinity.
Yet, to this general rule are, at least, two seeming exceptions. The head of a hippopotamus is figured by Lee, in his History of Lancashire, and noticed as found
