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, 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 sentiment was fami liar to her heart, every female v tue was exemplified in her life. Yet, this woman, thus lovely, thes 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 bling 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 he 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 difeafe that in Scot land 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. NATURAL NATURAL HISTORY. On a fuhmarine Forest, on the East Coast of England, by Jofeph Correa de Serra, LL.D. F.R.S. and 4.8. from the Philofophical Tranfactions of the Royal Society. N geology, more perhaps than in any other branch of natural iftory, there exifts a neceffity of trictly feparating the facts obferved rom the ideas which, in order to xplain them, may occur to the nind of the obferver. In the preent ftate of this fcience, every well fcertained fact increafes our ftill arrow ftock of real knowledge; vhen, on the contrary, the reafonngs we are enabled to make, are at beft but ingenious guefles, which oo often bias and miflead the judge. nent. I fhall therefore endeavour, n this paper, to give, first, a mere lefcription of the object, unmixed vith any fyftematical ideas, and hall afterwards offer fuch conjccres on its caufe as feem to me to e fairly grounded on obfervation. It was a common report in Lininfhire, that a large extent of ets of moor, fituated along its aft, and visible only in the lowest abs of the year, was chiefly comfed of decayed trees. Thefe ets. are marked in Mitchel's chart that coast, by the name of clay ts; and the village of Hattoff, polite, 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 Lincolnshire, 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 first day after the equinoctial full moon, when the loweft ebbs were to be expected, we went in a boat, at half past twelve at noon, and foon after fet foot upon one of the largest 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 vitible round us, chiefly to the eastward and fouthward; and the fishermen, whole authority on this point is very competent, fay, that fimilar moors are to be found along the whole coaft, from Skegness 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 themselves ranging generally from eaft to weft in the largest dimenfion. We visited 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 still standing 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 greateft 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 ftill 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 fo 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 perfec leaves of ilex aquifolium, which are now in the Herbarium of the right hon. fir Jofeph Banks; and fome other leaves which, though lefs per fect, seem to belong to fomne fpecies of willow. In this ftratum of rotten leaves, we could also diftinguit feveral roots of arundo phragmites. Thefe iflets, according to the moft 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 iflets, 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 eaft to weft. A well dug at Sutton, by Jour 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 iflets. The difpofition of the ftrata was found to be as follows: Gravel and water; the water has a chalybeate taste. In order to ascertain 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, perEfectly 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 thofe of the birch tree, heing there allo This moor exabundantly found. tends over all the Lincolnshire fens, and has been traced as far as Peterborough, 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 thofe 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 thefe places; and de la Pryme † in the fecond. * XOL. XLI. The roots are there likewise standing 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 afcertained with exactnefs by the above-mentioned obfervers, we may eafily conceive to correfpond 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 thefe 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 ftratum,) are fufficient reafons for this opinion. Such a wide spread affemblage of vegetable ruins, lying almoft in the fame level, and that level generally under the common mark of low water, muft naturally ftrike the obferver, and give birth to the following questions: 1. What is the epoch of this deftruction? History of Embanking and Draining. Chap. xxvii. Bb 2. By 2. By what agency was it effected? In answer to thefe queftions, I will venture to fubmit the following reflections: The foffil remains of vegetables hitherto dug up in fo many parts of the globe, are, on a clofe infpection, found to belong to two very different ftates of our planet. The parts of vegetables, and their impreffions, found in mountains of a cotaceous, fchiftous, or even fometimes of a calcareous nature, are chiefly of plants now exifting between the tropics, which could neither have grown in the latitudes in which they are dug up, nor have been carried and depofited there by any of the acting forces under the prefent conftitution of nature. The formation, indeed, of the very mountains in which they are buried, and the nature and difpofition of the materials which compofe them, are fuch as we cannot account for by any of the actions and re-actions which, in the actual state of things, take place on the furface of the earth. We must neceffarily recur to that period in the hiftory of our planet, when the furface of the ocean was at least so much above its prefent level, as to cover even the fummits of these fecondary mountains which contain the remains of tropical plants. The changes which thefe vegetables have fuffered in their fubftance, is almost total: they commonly retain only the external configuration of what they originally were. Such is the ftate in which they have been found in England, by Llwyd; in France, by Juffieu; in the Netherlands, by Burtin; not to mention inftances in more diftant countries. Some of the impreflions or remains of plants found in foils of this ture, which were, by more ancien and lefs enlightened oryctologifts, fuppofed to belong to plants actsally growing in temperate and cold climates, feem, on accurate inventigation, to have been parts of exotic vegetables. In fact, whether we fuppofe them to have grown near the fpot where they are found, or to have been carried thither from dif ferent parts, by the force of an in pelling flood, it is equally difficult to conceive, how organized beings, which, in order to live, require fuch a vaft difference in temperature and in feafons, could live on the fame fpot, or how their remains could (from climates fo widely diftant) be brought together to the fame place, by one common diflocating caule. To this ancient order of foil vegetables belong whatever retains a vegetable fhape, found in or near coal-mines, and (to judge from the places where they have been found) the greater part of the agatized woods. But, from the fpecies and prefent ftate of the trees which are the fubject of this memoir, and from i the fituation and nature of the foil in which they are found, it seems very clear that they do not belong to this primeval order of vegeta ble ruins. The fecond order of foffil vegetables, comprehends those which are found in ftrata of clay or fand; ma terials which are the refult of flow depofitions of the fea or of rivers, agents ftill at work under the prefent conftitution of our planetThefe vegetable remains are found in fuch flat countries as may be confidered to be of a new formation. Their vegetable organization fill fubfifts, at least in part: and their vegetable fubftance has fuffered a change |