A SUMMARY OF BOG THEORIES 311 



ter (23, p. 129). They give the terms "sphagnum moor" and 

 "raised bog" among the twenty-two synonyms for "hochmoor." 

 They also give a comprehensive summary of the literature deal- 

 ing with the term "moor." Of all of the definitions that had 

 been offered, they could find only four worthy of consideration. 

 All of the four contain as their essential part the idea that the 

 substratum is composed of the products of the decay of plants. 

 The following is a translation of the definition that they accept. 

 It is quoted by them from Weber (61). The parentheses are 

 inserted by Friih und Schroter. 



"Moors are (in the main quarternary, mostly allu\'ial) for- 

 mations of the surface of the earth which have been formed 

 by plants and which always have at the surface a mass of de- 

 composition products rich in carbon (acid) which consists of 

 pure plant substance (mostly cellulose)." 



This definition includes both the "flachmoor" and the "hoch- 

 moor." There seems to be nothing in the definition of "sphag- 

 num bog" ("hochmoor") suggested at the beginning of this 

 paper that is inconsistent wdth it. The parentheses, it will be 

 noted, emphasize three ideas, (a) that these moors occur on 

 either pleistocene drift or on deposits of some sort that have 

 been laid down in post pleistocene times, (b) that the soil water 

 has an acid reaction, (c) that the decay at the surface has not 

 gone far enough to break up the cellulose of the sphagnum or 

 other plants involved. The first of these ideas holds generalh' 

 for the bogs of the Puget Sound region that the writer has seen, 

 for they are mostly on glacial till, but does not seem to hold for 

 all of the bogs of Alaska. The second idea holds for all of the 

 bogs from which the ^vriter has examined water. The third 

 idea seems to be true of all bogs examined by the writer in the 

 Puget Sound region and in Alaska. 



Along the borders of sphagnum bogs especially where they 

 overhe glacial till there is frequently a zone of mucky soil on 

 which there is a more or less gradual transition to a less specialized 

 flora. (Cf. Burns 1, p. 120 and Shaw 48, pp. 447-450.) Sphag- 

 niun bogs may occur as openings in dense woods {e.g., King 

 County, Washington) or they may occur in treeless regions 



