258 Account ofihc Bursting of a Bog in Ireland, 



which, as is well known, are always hollow) I ever saw. This 

 is a very remarkable, and, as it appears to me, wholly unac- 

 countable fact, seeing that bog oak, in common with some 

 other kinds of bog timber, becomes of a darker hue, and in- 

 creases both in weight and dimensions ; its additional weight, 

 which in oak is to a very striking degree, being with great 

 reason ascribed to the presence of oxide of iron, which, on the 

 decomposition of the various plants in peat, of which iron is 

 always an ingredient, penetrates through the fibres of the 

 wood, and in other places, sinking to the bottom of the marsh, 

 forms that well-known mineral, bog iron ore. 



As to the Works of Meris Hands, and, Inorga?iic Objects oc- 

 curring in bogs, the wrecks of ships, oars, and nautical in- 

 struments in the Dutch; stone arrow-heads, stone hatchets, 

 and canoes, in the Irish ; are the most common. [IV. 543.] 



I now proceed to the more immediate subject of this paper. 

 Fairloch Moss, one of the many other mosses going under the 

 name collectively of Sloggan, the largest bog in the north of 

 Ireland, covering, with various breaks, an extent of ground of 

 eleven thousand acres, is the name of the morass where the 

 M burst" about to be described took place. It is situate 

 about seven Irish miles from the small but flourishing linen- 

 manufacturing town of Ballymena, and two miles from Ran- 

 dalstown ; and the mail-coach road from Belfast to London- 

 derry passes by, and, as it will appear in the sequel, divides, 

 as it were, in half this extraordinary burst. The surrounding 

 country is for the most part flat, barren, and uninteresting; 

 broken, however, here and there, especially near Fairloch 

 Moss, by tolerably deep longitudinal valleys. It was close to 

 one of these valleys that the morass burst; a fortunate cir- 

 cumstance ; for, had it happened on an eminence, and flowed 

 down thence over a perfectly level country, destruction of 

 property, and of animal and human life, to an immense extent 

 would infallibly have been the consequence: as it was, how- 

 ever, its pernicious effects were very trifling compared with 

 those related to have accompanied other preceding bursts. 



On Saturday, Sept. 17., the burst commenced. During 

 the whole of that day it was observed, and, in all probability, 

 the same might have been seen for several days preceding, to 

 swell up gradually in a convex shape, till it had attained the 

 height of 30 ft. ; when, about five in the afternoon, a loud 

 noise, like the sound of a mighty rushing wind (so the cot- 

 tager residing near the spot described it to me), was heard, 

 and the mass of bog sank down for several feet, and a col- 

 lection of tufts, mud, and water moved forwards, though by no 

 means rapidly, in a north-east by east direction. Here, 



