Having given you then all the authentic or conjectural memoirs that have in general occurred to my reflection upon the most ancient state of this country, I shall proceed to other particularities, nearer our own times, through every parish; only first take notice in short of a wonderful appearance in nature all over this country, and which is common to all such like upon the globe, as far as my informations reach: that is, the infinite quantities of subterraneous trees, lying three or four foot deep, of vast bulk and different species, chiefly fir and oak, exceeding hard, heavy and black: many times the branches reach so near day as to break their ploughs, for so I have heard them complain about Crowland: about Kyme and Billingay they have dug up some boats or canoos made of hollowed trunks of trees.[19] Many people will think that this is nothing but the effect of particular floods, and that this country was once a forest, and not long since disafforested. This country was once taken into the forest of Kesteven by the Norman kings, (as you have told me) only with a political view of extending their power, and disafforested soon after at the instance of the prior of Spalding: yet it is true of Nassaburg hundred only, in Northamptonshire. But in my apprehension, as to the matter before us, such confine their notions to very scanty bounds: an universal phænomenon requires a more dilated solution, and no less than that of the Noachian deluge. But upon this I hope for an occasion to be more copious another time: at present I remember a passage in Pausanias’s _Attics_ toward the end; speaking of an ebeny statue of Archigetes, “I have heard, (says he) from a man of Cyprus very skilful in medicinal herbs, that ebeny bears no leaves, no fruit, nor has it any stock exposed to the sun, only roots in the earth, which the Ethiopians dig up. Some of them are particularly skilful in finding them out.” I doubt not but our author speaks of subterranean trees, and that our people might use this timber to better use than burning it.