RELATION OF MARL PONDS AND PEAT BOGS 
W. W. ROWLEE 
Cornell University 
The filled-in lakes and ponds of western New York are of two 
distinct types, the bogs often called peat or cranberry bogs, and the 
marl ponds. ‘These ponds are alike in that both occupy depressions in 
the terrain and both are filled with water from springs at their bottom 
or near their shores. They also resemble each other in that both are 
subject to filling in with material produced by organic life in and 
around them. They differ from each other however in the character 
of the water they contain, in the flora which inhabits the water and 
the adjacent shore and the method by which they are filled in. 
The glaciation of the country left a terrain with potholes and other 
depressions particularly favorable to peat-bog formation. 
The material with which peat bogs are filled consists mainly of 
sphagnum and heath-like plants always much disintegrated and 
accumulated principally around the shores. Peat bogs have long 
been a subject of interest. Mitchill in 1798 studied them and set 
forth their general structural characteristics in a paragraph of his 
report as commissioner for the Agricultural Society of New York, 
as follows: “As the peat is formed, layer over layer, in the course of 
successive vegetations, it can be easily explained how trunks of trees, 
fossil wood, and bodies and bones of animals came to be buried so 
deep below the present surface; because at the same time when the 
trees fell, and animals died, in the places where they are now found, 
they were upon the top, and, by the perpetual growth of the plants 
around, they have in many places, become covered to a great depth.” 
He was particularly impressed with the bones of extinct species of 
animals found in bogs in Orange County and other parts of eastern 
New York. Dachnowski in 1912 gives a very comprehensive dis- 
cussion and classification of the distribution of species in the several 
areas on the surface of a bog. 
The flora now found on the peat bogs corresponds to the flora of 
colder climates. The flora of the marl ponds corresponds more closely 
to that of the seashore in the same or more southerly latitudes. Marl 
ponds are filled in not only near the shores but in all parts of the pond 
where the water is not too deep. The water in the marl ponds is 
410 
