GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TEERITORIES. 355 



twigs of couiferons or species of the heath family, may be recognized 

 from the surface to the lowest part of the banks of ancient beds of peat. 

 1 have many times seen strata composed essentially of the heath, {Erica 

 vulgaris,) wliicli enters often in great projioition into the formation of 

 the peat in Europe, whose branches, with leaves still attached to them, 

 were as identifiable as in their original form, aud this nnder 10 to 12 

 feet of peat. In digging for the foundation of a state monnment at 

 Berlin, a thin bed of peat was exposed under 40 feet of drift-sand. This 

 j)eat was a compound of mosses, which were so well preserved that the 

 species could be recognized just as if the mosses had been recently taken 

 out of the swamps. Professor Horton, attached to the geological sur- 

 vey of Ohio, found two identifiable specimens of mosses in a peat-deposit 

 underlying clay-beds covered with drift. 



The growth of the peat in basins full of water and from immersed 

 vegetable, results from proceedings somewhat different, but not less 

 admirably adapted by nature to the purposed end. All the basins where 

 the peat is formed under water have a bottom of clay prepared in 

 advance by some kinds of water-plants, Confemv, which, living totally 

 nnder water, out of atmospheric infiuence, are mere cellular plants, and 

 by decomposition produce, like the infusoria and small mollusks which 

 they feed, siliceous or clay deposits. To these capillary plants are often 

 added the Characcai and some species of mosses which, by peculiar and 

 as yet unexplained structure, have the property of transforming and 

 assimilating in their tissue the carbonic acid of the water into lime. It 

 is only after the preparation of the clay bottom, and when the basin has 

 been rendered impermeable, that water-plants of another kind begin 

 their vegetation. The Sphagnum among them, the floating species of 

 Hypnum, the ThypJia, Sparganium, Pond-weeds, }Yater-liUes, all plants 

 rooting in more or less deep water, but opening their leaves and flowers 

 at or above the surface, and thus by atmospheric influence transforming 

 the carbonic acid into fibrous tissue, and becoming woody plants fit for 

 future use as combustible mineral. The debris of this vegetation are 

 heaped every year and decay under water. These debris, generally more 

 mixed, and mostly, too, partly decayed and bruised before submersion, 

 form a more compact mass, without recognizable annual layers, and in 

 time may be transformed into that coal named cannel. 



Swamps of this kind, however, are not always continuous either in a 

 vertical or horizontal direction. It happens in some countries that when 

 peat formed by immersion of vegetables has been heaped up to the level 

 of the water, the upper aquatic vegetation begins its work and builds, 

 high above it, a deposit of peat, where the same iihenomena, viz, distinct 

 annual layers, &c., are remarked as in the emerged peat formation. On 

 another side the subaquatic vegetation, and therefore the immersed 

 formation of the peat, is sometimes in full activity over a swamp surface, 

 while at another place of the same swamp, the ground raised above water 

 is covered by a cranberryswamporan emerged i)eat-l»og. This is the case 

 on some of the great swamps of Xorth Ohio, and I still recollect with some 

 kind of dismay, that twenty years ago, misled by vague informations, I 

 waded in three feet of water over the surface of an immersed peat forma- 

 tion, so thickly ovei'grown by bulrushes (Scirpiis pioigens, Scirpiisvalidus, 

 &c.) that once within this kind of thicket I lost sight of the borders, already 

 far away, and lost my direction, too. Searching there a way of egress 

 for hours, I had full time to investigate that unpleasant side of the 

 formation of the peat, till at last I came to the upper i^art of the same 

 swamp, the cranberry-marsh which I was anxious to explore. The dif- 

 ference of compounds in some beds of coal which, sometimes, have layers 



