“That this vast level was at first a firm dry land, and not annoyed with any extraordinary inundation by the sea, or stagnation of fresh waters, is evident from the quantity of trees that have been found buried in different parts of the fens, and also from a variety of other circumstances. “Dugdale, in his _History of Embanking_, observes that in making several-channels for draining in the isle of Axholm, great numbers of oak, fir, and other trees were found in the moor. The fir trees lay at the depth of between four and five feet, but the oaks were but little more than three feet beneath the soil. They were discovered lying near their roots, which “still stand as they grew,” that is, in firm earth below the moor, and the bodies, for the most part, northwest from the roots, not cut down with axes, but burnt asunder, somewhat near the ground, as the ends of them, being _coaled_, do manifest. The oaks were lying in multitudes, and of an extraordinary size, being five yards in compass, and sixteen yards long; and some smaller of a greater length, with a good quantity of acorns and small nuts near them.” Similar discoveries have been made in the fen near Thorney; in digging the channel north of Lynn, called Downham Eau; and in many other places.” _Mr Richard Atkins_, a gentleman of considerable research, and a commissioner of sewers in the reign of James I. was of opinion that the Fens were formerly meadow land, fruitful, healthy, and lucrative to the inhabitants, from affording relief to the people of the highlands in times of drought. Peterborough, he observes, was of old called Meadhamstead, on account of the meadows there, though most of the present fens belong to that district. Likewise Ely, or Peterborough Great Fen was once a forest. “In a Paper communicated to the Royal Society by the reverend _John Rastrick_ of Lynn, and published in the Philosophical Transactions (No. 279, 1702) it is mentioned, that on removing the foundation of the old sluice at the end of Hammond’s Bank, where it falls into Boston Haven, the workmen discovered many roots of trees issuing from their boles, or trunks, spread in the ground; and in taking them up with the earth in which they were embedded, they met with a solid gravelly and stony soil, of the high country kind, but black and discoloured, from the length of years, and the change which had befallen it.