[ganong] peat bogs OF NEW BRUNSWICK 157 



parts of the raised bog the moss is perhaps not growing, excei)t here and 

 there in very small spots, though it is by no means dead, and does not 

 at all answer to the very dry condition described for many of the bogs of 

 Europe. Over the most of the raised part the moss is certainly alive and 

 vigorous. Moreover, even on the very driest parts of the bog, if one 

 digs a hole but a foot deep, water at once collects in it, and a handful of 

 moss taken anywhere just beneath the surface, contains so much water 

 that a considerable quantity may be squeezed out b}' the hand. Imme- 

 diately under the roots of the trees on the small islands, water is abund- 

 ant, and I doubt if these islands are gaining ground. The larger trees on 

 them are either dead or only alive at the top, and the moss has grown up 

 so high about them that the trunk of each one stands in a pit a foot or 

 more deep. The greatly dwarfed trees scattered over the bogs are cer- 

 tainly not gaining, for most of them are dead at the toj5, and seedlings 

 are so rare that I could find but two or three after hours of search. The 

 presence of the islands seems to me by no means to imply that we are at 

 the beginning of a period of drying up of the bog, but simply that on 

 the spots where they occur, the bog has attained to the greatest possible 

 height to which it can lift the water, or rather to the greatest dryness 

 which the conditions of its water supply allow. This driest part of the 

 bog, not necessarily its highest part,' is just dry enough to allow the 

 spruces to secure a precarious foothold, and one which at the present 

 day they are losing rather than gaining. This helps to explain the dif- 

 ference between the vegetation of the islands, nearly all spruces, and of 

 the other parts of the bog where larches are more abundant. 1 he 

 larches can stand the wetness better than the spruces, but where the 

 ground is drier the latter can drive out the former. Our bogs, then, 

 seem not to be in a dry period of our history, nor even necessarily at the 

 beginning of one. Blytt states (2^) that the present is a dry period for 

 those of Europe, but ours seem not to be in so dry a condition and to be 

 still growing.'"^ 



On the mode of growth of the raised bogs I have nothing new to 

 offer. This is well known and stated in various works, such as those of 

 Solms, Warming, Eischer-Benzon, Shaler, Chalmers. I shall simply sum- 

 marize here what our bogs show in this resjject. Probably they originate 

 in basins on flat bogs. Baumann (1) holds that not only do raised bogs 



1 It may be a resultant between height and distance from the basin ; where the 

 water-supplj' is all drawn from a certain basin, the surrounding bog would grow 

 progressively drier away from it, especially on the surface, and hence its driest part 

 may come some distance away from the highest part. 



2 Senft (16) speaks of periods of more and less active growth in^those of Europe, 

 and cases of very rapid growth are known. Geikie (10) mentions a growth of :i to 4 

 feet in 24 years near Constance, and of 4 to 6 feet in 30 years near Hanover ; but, 

 doubtless, these rates are exceptional and due to local causes. Lequereux, (nioted 

 by Wright (22), estimates an average rate of one foot a century. 



Sec. IV., 1897. 9. 



