246 Lord Justice Fry [Jan. 23, 



steep mountain-side, or on the bottom and sides of a gorge, these beds 

 will hold up a great body of water against the force of gravity ; and 

 again, the Irish bogs are described as often ascending from the edges 

 towards the interior, sometimes by a gradual, and sometimes by a 

 sudden ascent, so that at times the bog is so high that it reaches the 

 height of the church steeples of the adjoining country, without any 

 rising ground intervening. 



These peculiarities in the structure of Sphagnum have produced 

 considerable physical effects. 



(1) Everyone knows the different effects of rain falling on a land 

 of bare rock or sand, like the Sinaitic desert, and on a retentive soil ; 

 in the one case it produces a freshet or a flood, that leaves no trace 

 behind ; in the other it is held for a while in suspense, and only 

 gradually passes into the streams. The glaciers and the Sphagnum 

 beds of the mountains of Europe alike act as compensation reservoirs 

 — receive large quantities of moisture as it falls, and retain it till the 

 drier season comes, when it gradually passes away in part ; but for 

 these reservoirs, many of the rivers would exhibit a far greater 

 shrinkage in summer and autumn than is now the case. 



But (2) the Sphagnum beds have become peat, and have gradually 

 filled up the ancient lakes and morasses, and turned water into dry 

 land. It is true that the peat appears under some circumstances to be 

 formed by other vegetables than Sphagnum, and in all cases it has 

 probably some other plants or roots growing amongst it. Mr. 

 Darwin tells us that in Terra del Fuego and the Chonos Archipelago, 

 peat is formed by two phanerogamous plants, of which one at least 

 seems endowed with an immortality something like that of the 

 Sphagnum ; and the peat . of the fens of Lincolnshire is formed 

 mainly of Hypnum fiuitans. But Sphagnum appears to be the main 

 constituent of peat in Ireland, Scotland, and, so far as my researches 

 have gone, in England ; the peculiar spiral threads of the cells of 

 the Sphagnum leaf being easily detected in the peat so long as it 

 retains traces of its organic origin. 



Ancient Forests. — The peat mosses, and the sea-shores of our 

 islands, and of the adjoining mainland, reveal, as it is very well 

 known, traces of ancient forests. Many parts of England, nearly all 

 the mainland of Scotland, the Hebrides, the Orkneys, and the Shet- 

 lands, Ireland, and Denmark, the shores of both sides of the English 

 Channel, Normandy, Brittany, the Channel Islands, and Holland, and 

 the shores of Norway, all bear evidence to the presence of these 

 primasval forests ; and what is more, to the successive existence of 

 forests, each in succession living above the buried remains of the 

 earlier ones. 



What is tbe cause of the disappearance of these ancient forests 

 one after the other ? To this question various answers have been 

 J) reposed. 



The Eomans, it has been suggested, in their inroads, cut ways 

 through the forests and laid waste the land. But, wide as was the 



