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DISINTEGRATING PEAT CONTAINING FOSSIL SEEDS. 
Seeing the unexpected results of this treatment with strong soda solution, 
I was anxious to test whether we had really found a satisfactory method 
of dealing with recalcitrant peats, but no opportunity presented itself till 
а few weeks ago, when through the courtesy of Mr. Rankin, of the Storey 
Institute, Laneaster, I was enabled to test a specimen of a particularly 
difficult peat. Mr. Rankin had previously experimented with varions 
methods, including Dr. Gunnar Andersson’s nitric acid treatment, but with 
comparatively little success, and had come to the conclusion that “Ше 
best method, though laborious, was to go carefully over the dry peat and 
pick out the seeds with a needle, or dry it a little and tease it out under 
water." The specimen sent by Mr. Rankin was of a ‘ 
the base of a high peat moor” near Lancaster. It weighed about 2 oz. 
I boiled it for two hours with its own weight of dehydrated soda, crushing 
it once slightly so as to allow the water to have access to all parts. This 
I did with a sort of pestle made by a flat piece of cork on the end of a 
stick. At the end of the time, the matted fibre appearing to be completely 
loosened, Т poured the contents of the pan into a sieve of very fine mesh— 
‘swamp peat from 
we always use perforated zine in preference to wire, as seeds are apt to 
get entangled in the wire and damaged—and held it under a tap, moving 
it slightly with the fingers now and again, so that the water could percolate 
freely. The matrix of humus had been either completely dissolved, or 
disintegrated to an exceedingly fine sediment, for the'water which streamed 
off, though at the first dark brown in colour, flowed unimpeded through 
the sieve. After a few minutes the water ran through perfectly clean, 
and the contents of the sieve were completely loosened and separate. I 
therefore washed them into the middle of the sieve, inverted it over a bowl, 
and allowed water to run through it the wrong way. By this means the 
residue was washed into the bowl, where it was, as in the sample exhibited, 
clean, quite separate, and ready to be looked over with a dissecting micro- 
scope, and the vegetable and other remains in no way injured by their 
treatment. 
The result of the examination by this method was that from the 
exceedingly small sample sent by Mr. Rankin, only 2 oz., I was able to 
pick out nearly three hundred specimens of moss, seeds, and insects, in 
a fit state to be determined. 
'The species of flowering plants represented are :— 
Lychnis Flos-cuculi, Linn. | Scirpus pauciflorus, LigAtf. 
Menyanthes trifoliata, Linn. | » fluitans, Linn. 
Betula alba, Linn. Carex 2 sp. 
Cladium Mariscus, Ze. Br, 
Many specimens of moss, 
Several elyira of beetles, and wings of flies. 
A few fragments of charcoal, or carbonised wood, 
