with Remarks on the Nature, Sre., of Peat. 257 



account of the preservation of two human bodies in peat for 

 fifty-nine years," will be sufficient for my present purpose. 



H On January 14. 1675, a farmer and his maid-servant 

 were crossing the peat moors above Hope, near Castleton, in 

 Derbyshire. They were overtaken by a great fall of snow, 

 and both perished : their bodies were not found till the 3d of 

 May in the same year ; and, being then offensive, the coroner 

 ordered them to he buried on the spot in the peat. They 

 lay undisturbed twenty-eight years and nine months; when 

 the curiosity of some countrymen induced them to open their 

 graves. The bodies appeared quite fresh ; the skin was fair, 

 and of its natural colour, and the flesh as soft as that of per- 

 sons newly dead. They were afterwards frequently exposed 

 as curiosities, until in the year 1716, when they were buried by 

 order of the man's descendants. At that time, Dr. Bourne of 

 Chesterfield, who examined the bodies, says, the man was 

 perfect, his beard was strong, the hair of his head was short, 

 and his skin hard and of a tanned leather colour, like the 

 liquor he was lying in. The body of the woman was more 

 injured, having been more frequently exposed : the hair was 

 like that of a living person. Mr. Wormwald, the minister of 

 Hope, was present when they were removed. The man's 

 legs, which had never before been uncovered, were quite fair 

 when the stockings were drawn ofTJ and the joints played 

 freely, without the least stiffness." 



Towards the end of the last century, the body of a man 

 dressed in the Saxon costume was dug up out of Hatfield 

 Moss in the north of England. His nails, hair, flesh, and 

 everything about him, were perfect and entire. 



In the very interesting museum belonging to Mr. J. V. 

 Stewart of Rockhill, in the county of Donegal, whose admir- 

 able essay on the ornithology of Ards, in the same count}', 

 must be fresh in the recollection of many of your readers 

 [V. 578 — 586.], I saw a piece of human flesh which exactly 

 resembled a piece of tanned leather saturated with muddy 

 water. This, Mr. Stewart informed me, he himself cut off 

 from the carcass of a man found in a peat moss, about 5 ft. 

 below the surface, near the banks of the beautiful Lough Esk, 

 a few miles from the town of Donegal. By the side of this 

 body was a clasp-knife in a sheath of sheepskin : the knife was 

 rusty, the leather perfectly uninjured. Mr. Stewart also 

 showed me a human bone from the same morass ; a thigh 

 bone, as I understood, which had contracted to one half its 

 length and dimensions, though it had preserved its original 

 shape and contour perfect and entire ; was of a black colour 

 and lighter than any bones (not even excepting those of birds 

 Vol. IX. — No. 61. u 



