CLASSIFICATION OF MOORLAND AT FERSIT. 75 



fore out of the question. The area on which the plantations on 

 "shallow peat" are established are within the boundaries of 

 those described in my former article in the January issue. They 

 form a strip varying from 200 yards to over 400 yards in width, 

 and extend along the West Highland Railway from Fersit to 

 Loch Treig. The elevation varies from 850 feet to 900 feet over 

 the sea. The aspect varies from south-west to north. The land 

 is very undulating, most of it occurring on a series of morainic 

 mounds grouped together. Between these are a number of small 

 lakes, some of which attain considerable size and depth, while 

 others are but mere swamps with a slightly higher surface, and 

 they too appear to have formed similar lakes at some earlier 

 period. More recently they have become filled up by accumula- 

 tions of decayed vegetable matter, the remains of mosses and 

 other plants which grow in them. 



The subsoil on the slopes is very gravelly, and water can 

 percolate freely through it, but on the top of knolls, and along 

 ridges, also at the foot of slopes, the gravel is mixed with clay 

 which forms a fairly hard pan of a very retentive nature, and 

 here the "hill moss" attains its greatest depth. For planting 

 purposes the "hill moss" is divided into three classes. 



The first class, or best quality, is met with on steep slopes and 

 seldom exceeds 4 or 5 inches in depth. On it grow heather, 

 sheep's fescue {Festiica ovina), devil's bit, species of orchids, and a 

 small proportion of bracken. It is also characterised by the 

 entire absence of the deer grass, heath rush {/uncus sqnarrosus), 

 and the cotton grasses, which appear in the second and third 

 classes. This quality of peat is always planted with larch, which 

 proves most successful (Plate VIII. Fig. 2). 



The second class, or next best quality, is dark in colour and 

 much more fibrous than the first class, and attains a depth of 

 9 inches. It also contains much more moisture. On it grows 

 a thick sole of heather, with some heath rush, deer grass, and a 

 small sprinkling of Eriophoruin vaginatutn, and bog asphodel 

 {Narthecium ossi/ragum). This quality of peat is better adapted 

 for Scots pine than for larch. The former has been planted 

 rather extensively on it, and grows strongly and well. Larch 

 has also been planted on it, but during a period of four to six 

 years it remained in a very unhealthy state, from which, however, 

 it quickly recovered, apparently after the roots had penetrated 

 the subsoil. 



