Edinburgh, there was none by whom he was more zealously, patronized than by lord Monboddo and his lovely daughter. No man's feelings were ever more powerfully or exquifitely alive than thofe of the ruftic bard, to the emotions of gratitude, or to the admiration of the good and fair. In a poem which he at that time wrote, as a panegyrical addrefs to Edinburgh, he took occafion to celebrate the beauty and excellence of Mifs Burnet, in, perhaps, the finest stanza of the whole:

"Thy daughters bright thy walks adorn,

Gay as the gilded summer sky, Sweet as the dewy milk-white thorn, Dear as the raptur'd thrill of joy! Fair Burnet ftrikes th' adoring eye; Heav'n's beauties on my fancy fhine, I fee the Sire of Love on high,

And own his work, indeed, divine!"

She was the ornament of the elegant fociety of the city in which the refided, her father's pride, and the comfort of his domeftic life in his declining years. Every amiable and every noble fentiment was fami

liar to her heart, every female virtue was exemplified in her life. Yet, this woman, thus lovely, thus elegant, thus wife and virtuous, whofe life, for the confolation of her father, fhould have been prolonged till he had clofed his dying eyes in peace; who, for a bleffing to fociety, fhould have been fpared till fhe had fet the fame example in the difcharge of the duties of a wife and mother which the had exhibited in performing thofe of a daughter. This woman was cut off in the flower of her age, and left her father bereft of the laft tender tie which bound him to fociety and to life. She died about fix years fince, of a confumption; a disease that in Scotland proves too often fatal to the lovelieft and moft promifing among the fair and the young. Neither his philofophy, nor the neceffary' torpor of the feelings of extreme old age were capable of preventing lord Monboddo from being very deeply affected by fo grievous a lofs; and from that time he began to droop exceedingly in his health and spirits.

1

NATURAL

On a fubmarine Foreft, on the Eaft Coast of England, by Jofeph Correa de Serra, LL.D. F.R.S. and A.S. from the Philofophical Tranfuctions of the Royal Society.

IN

in

N geology, more perhaps than any other branch of natural hiftory, there exifis a neceffity of ftrictly feparating the facts obferved from the ideas which, in order to explain them, may occur to the mind of the obferver. In the prefent ftate of this fcience, every well afcertained fact increafes our ftill narrow ftock of real knowledge; when, on the contrary, the reafonings we are enabled to make, are at beft but ingenious guefies, which too often bias and mislead the judge. ment. I fhall therefore endeavour, in this

paper, to give, firft, a mere defeription of the object, unmixed with any fyftematical ideas, and fhall afterwards offer fuch conjectures on its caufe as feem to me to be fairly grounded on obfervation.

It was a common report in Lincolnshire, that a large extent of iflets of moor, fituated along its coaft, and vifible only in the loweft ebbs of the year, was chiefly compofed of decayed trees. Thefe iflets are marked in Mitchel's chart of that coaft, by the name of clay huts; and the village of Huttoff, ppofite to which they principally

lie, feems to have derived its name from them. In the month of September, 1796, I went to Sutton, on the coaft of Lincolnfhire, in company with the right honourable prefident of the fociety, in order to examine their extent and nature.-The 19th of the month, being the firft day after the equinoctial full moon, when the lowest ebbs were to be expected, we went in a boat, at half paft twelve at noon, and foon after fet foot upon one of the largeft iflets then appearing. Its expofed furface was about thirty yards long, and twenty-five wide, when the tide was at the lowest. A great number of fimilar iflets were vifible round us, chiefly to the eaftward and fouthward; and the fishermen, whofe authority on this point is very competent, fay, that fimilar moors are to be found along the whole coaft, from Skegnefs to Grimfby, particularly off Addlethorpe and Mablethorpe. The channels dividing the iflets were, at the time we faw them, wide, and of various depths; the iflets themfelves ranging generally from east to west in the largest dimenfion.

We vifited them again in the ebbs of the 20th and 21ft; and, though it generally did not ebb fo far as we expected, we could notwithstanding afcertain, that they confifted almost entirely of roots,

trunks,

trunks, branches, and leaves of aquatic plants. The remains of fome of thefe trees were ftill ftanding on their roots; while the trunks of the greater part lay fcattered on the ground, in every poffible direction. The bark of the trees and roots appeared generally as fresh as when they were growing; in that of the birches particularly, of which a great quantity was found, even the thin filvery membranes of the outer fkin were difcernible. The timber of all kinds, on the contrary, was decompofed and foft, in the greatest part of the trees; in fome, however, it was firm, efpecially in the knots. The people of the country have often found among them very found pieces of timber, fit to be employed for feveral economical purposes.

The forts of wood which are still diftinguishable are birch, fir, and oak. Other woods evidently exift in thefe iflets, of fome of which we found the leaves in the foil; but our prefent knowledge of the comparative anatomy of timbers, is not so far advanced as to afford us the means of pronouncing with confidence refpecting their fpecies. In general, the trunks, branches, and roots of the decayed trees, were confiderably flattened; which is a phænomenon obferved in the Surtarbrand or foffil wood of Iceland, and which Scheuchzer remarked alfo in the foffil wood found in the the neighbourhood of the lake of Thun, in Switzerland.

The foil to which the trees are affixed, and in which they grew, is a foft greafy clay; but, for many inches above its furface, the foil is entirely compofed of rotten leaves, fcarcely diftinguishable to the eye, many of which may be feparated,

by putting the foil in water, and dexterously and patiently ufing a fpatula, or a blunt knife. By this method, I obtained fome perfect leaves of ilex aquifolium, which are now in the Herbarium of the right hon. fir Jofeph Banks; and fome other leaves which, though less perfect, feem to belong to fomne fpecies of willow. In this ftratum of rotten leaves, we could also distinguish feveral roots of arundo phragmites.

Thefe iflets, according to the most accurate information, extend at least twelve miles in length, and about a mile in breadth, oppofite to Sutton fhore. The water without them, towards the fea, generally deepens fuddenly, fo as to form a fteep bank. The channels between the feveral islets, when the iflets are dry, in the lowest ebbs of the year, are from four to twelve feet deep; their bottoms are clay or fand, and their direction is gene`rally from east to west.

A well dug at Sutton, by Joshua Searby, fhows that a moor of the fame nature is found under ground, in that part of the country, at the depth of fixteen feet: confequently, very nearly on the fame level with that which conftitutes the inlets. The difpofition of the ftrata was found to be as follows:

Gravel and water; the water has a chalybeate tafte.

In order to afcertain the course of this fubterraneous ftratum of decayed vegetables, fir Jofeph Banks directed a boring to be made, in the fields belonging to the Royal Society, in the parish of Mablethorpe. Moor, of a fimilar nature to that of Searby's well, and of the iflets, was found, very nearly on the fame level, about four feet thick, and under it a loft clay.

The whole appearance of the rotten vegetables we obferved, perfectly refembles, according to the remark of fir Jofeph Banks, the moor which in Blankeney fen, and in other parts of the east fen in Lincolnshire, is thrown up in the making of banks; barks, like those of the birch tree, being there allo abundantly found. This moor extends over all the Lincolnshire fens, and has been traced as far as Peter

borough, more than fixty miles to the fouth of Sutton. On the north fide, the moory iflets, according to the fishermen, extend as far as Grimsby, fituated on the fouth fide of the mouth of the Humber; and it is a remarkable circumftance, that in the large tracts of low lands which lie on the fouth banks of that river, a little above its mouth, there is a fubterraneous ftratum of decayed trees and fhrubs, exactly like those we obferved at Sutton; particularly at Axholme ifle, a tract of ten miles in length, by five in breadth; and at Hatfield-chafe, which comprehends one hundred and eighty thousand acres. Dugdale had long ago made this obfervation, in the first of these places; and de la Prymet in the fecond.

XOL. XLI.

The roots are there likewife ftanding in the places where they grew; the trunks lie proftrate. The woods are of the fame fpecies as at Sutton. Roots of aquatic plants and reeds are likewife mixed with them; and they are covered by a ftratum of fome yards of foil, the thickness of which, though not ascertained with exactnefs by the above-mentioned obfervers, we may easily conceive to correspond with that which covers the ftratum of decayed wood at Sutton, by the circumftance of the roots being (according to Mr. Richardfon's obfervations) only visible when the water is low, where a channel was cut, which has left them uncovered.

Little doubt can be entertained of the moory iflets of Sutton being a part of this extenfive fubterraneous ftratum, which, by fome inroad of the fea, has been there ftripped of its covering of foil. The identity of the levels; that of the fpecies of trees; the roots of these affixed, in both, to the foil where they grew; and, above all, the flattened fhape of the trunks, branches, and roots, found in the iflets, (which can only be accounted for by the heavy preflure of a fuperinduced firatum,) are fufficient reafons for this opinion.

Such a wide fpread affemblage of vegetable ruins, lying almoft in the fame level, and that level generally under the common mark of low water, muft naturally strike the obferver, and give birth to the following questions:

1. What is the epoch of this deftruction?

B b

2. By