adjacent to the sea; also at Binfield Heath in Kent, &c. These trees were (some think) carried away in times past, by some accident of inundation, or by waters undermining the ground, till their own weight, and the winds bow’d them down, and overwhelm’d them in the mud: For ’tis observ’d, that these trees are no where found so frequently, as in boggy places; but that the burning of these trees so very bright, should be an argument they were fir, is not necessary, since the bituminous quality of such earth, may have imparted it to them; and Camden denies them to be fir-trees; suggesting the query; whether there may not possibly grow trees even under the ground, as well as other things? Theophrastus indeed, l. iv. c. 8. speaks of whole woods; bays and olives, bearing fruit; and that of some oaks bearing acorns, and those even under the sea; which was so full of plants and other trees, as (’tis said) Alexander’s forces sailing to the Indies, were much hindred by them. There are in Cumberland, on the sea-shore, trees sometimes discover’d at low-water, and at other times that lie buried in the sand; and in other mossie places of that county, ’tis reported, the people frequently dig up the bodies of vast trees without boughs, and that by direction of the dew alone in Summer; for they observe it never lies upon that part under which those trees are interr’d. These particulars I find noted by the ingenious author of the _Britannia Baconica_. How vast a forest, and what goodly trees were once standing in Holland, and those Low-countries, till about the year 860, 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.