Note 146 — Chapter VIII

The trunks of these prehistoric trees are often of enormous size, especially the oaks.[146] One no fewer than 130 feet in length was unearthed in 1909. The wood, after its ages of immersion, has become black, hard, and heavy, like the Irish bog oak. Associated with such débris, the peat often furnishes remains of the dwellers in these archaic woodlands; whence we know that bears, wolves, wild boars, and gigantic wild bulls roamed their shades. In the skull of one of these last, now in the Sedgwick Geological Museum at Cambridge, is imbedded a flint axe-head. The arm of the primeval savage who wielded that weapon must have been strong beyond the arms of common men.