256 Account of the Bursting of a Bog in Ireland, 



The Organic Objects found in Peat consist of occasionally 

 almost perfect skeletons of a gigantic but extinct species of 

 Cervus (the Irish elk), which has never been found any where 

 but in Ireland and the Isle of Man ; the horns, skulls, and 

 bones of the aurochs (Bos U'rus Lin.), now only met with in a 

 wild state in Russia, Livonia, and the most northern parts of 

 Europe ; and of the domestic sheep, cows, horses, pigs, and 

 other herbivorous quadrupeds. The remains of otters and 

 beavers have likewise been discovered in the peat of Ze- 

 landers (Bulletin de la Soc. Geol. de France, ii. 26.) : but by 

 far the most interesting organic remains discovered in peat 

 morasses are those of our own species, which prove in the 

 most striking manner the extraordinary, almost incredible, 

 antiseptic properties of peat ; properties attributed with great 

 probability to the carbonic and acid gases arising from, and 

 the charred wood common in, bogs ; charcoal being well 

 known to be a most powerful antiseptic, and to possess the 

 power of purifying water already putrid. Numerous well- 

 authenticated instances of this truly wonderful power are on 

 record ; but the following extract from the Philosophical 

 Transactioiis, 1754, " of a letter from Dr. Balguy, giving an 



magnificent size, had afforded him greater pleasure than all the bewitching 

 scenery of the lakes and mountains, which, however, he declared to be 

 superior in their way to any thing of the same kind he had ever beheld. 

 He expressed himself most gratified with the luxuriant woodland of 

 various species, so richly, yet so naturally, blended together on each side of 

 the passage into Turk Lake, by the old Weir bridge i — " Natural woods 

 have long ceased to exist, except in a few instances : this has been owing 

 to various causes. Extensive forests, occupying a long tract of tolerably 

 level ground, have been gradually destroyed by natural decay, hastened by 

 the increase of the bogs. The wood which they might have produced was " 

 useless to the proprietors ; the state of the roads, as well as of the country 

 in general, not permitting so bulky and weighty an article to be carried 

 from the place where it had grown, however valuable it might have proved 

 had it been transported elsewhere. In this situation the trees of the 

 natural forest pined and withered, and were thrown down by the wind ; 

 and it often necessarily happened that they fell into or across some little 

 stream or rivulet, by the side of which they had flourished and decayed. 

 The stream being stopped, the soil around it became soaked with standing 

 water, and, instead of being, as hitherto, the drain of the forest, the stop- 

 ping of the rivulet turned into a swamp what its current had formerly 

 rendered dry. The loose bog-earth, and the sour moisture with which it 

 was soaked, loosened and poisoned the roots of other neighbouring trees, 

 which, at the next storm, went to the ground in their turn, and tended to 

 impede still more the current of the water ; while the moss (as the bog- 

 earth is called in Scotland) went on increasing and heaving up, so as to 

 bury the trunks of the trees which it had destroyed. In the counties of 

 Inverness and Ross, instances may be seen at the present day where this 

 melancholy process of the conversion of a forest into a bog is still going 

 forward." {Quarterly Review, vol. xxxvi.) 



