60, that an hurricane obstructing
the mouth of the Rhine near Catwic, made that horrid devastation, good
authors mention; and they do this day find monstrous bodies and
branches, (nay with the very nuts, most intire) of prostrate and buried
trees, in the Veene, especially towards the south, and at the bottom of
the waters: Also near Bruges in Flanders, whole woods have been found
twenty ells deep, in 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 y