PEAT AS A PRESERVATIVE 



accumulates, though it may be blackened by peat, water, and 

 humic acid. It is for this reason that a peat-moss is such a 

 bad or rather an impossible soil. Neither roots nor bacteria 

 can thrive in saturated peat ; therefore the flora of a peat- 

 moss is generally confined to the upper surface, where air and 

 bacteria can reach the roots. Peat-mosses are also the home 

 of insectivorous plants, which get their nitrogenous food 

 from the insects which they catch. 



In consequence of this preserving effect of peat, it is 

 possible to trace the entire history of a peat-moss from the 

 very beginning. Remains of the Dwarf Willow or Polar 

 Birch have been found in England, showing that those now 

 Arctic plants were then flourishing in Norfolk. These are 

 generally in the lowest layers of peat-mosses. Next follow 

 remains of the Birch and Aspen, which would be growing, 

 as they do in places to-day, on mossy soil where the peat was 

 still thin. Higher up in the peat one finds remains of 

 Scotch Fir, showing that at that time regular forests of Scotch 

 Fir existed, e.g. in Sutherlandshire and on Lochar Moss, 

 where they do not grow at present. 



Some hold that the goats, black cattle, and ponies which 

 have been kept since the Roman occupation at any rate, are 

 responsible for the destruction of these forests. Others 

 hold that they were killed by a change of climate. But 

 they certainly existed. 



Trunks of Scotch Fir have even been found in peat at 

 2400 feet in Yorkshire, and at heights in Scotland which are 

 above all the present plantations. About this time it seems 

 that the newer Stone Age men must have been in Switzerland 

 and Denmark, for their remains and characteristic weapons 

 occur in those countries at the same level in the mosses as 

 the Scotch Fir. 



360 



