IN THE HIGHLANDS 271 



purple-grey tint and quite different from the white stems 

 of the birches along the shores of Loch Ness — in fact, 

 they are as snowy white as the bark of those that grow 

 to-day in Sweden and Russia ! 



I quite well know what most people will say — viz., 

 that the peat is a great preservative, and that, as in the 

 case of ensilage in a silo, decomposition has been arrested 

 by the exclusion of atmospheric air. But I would first 

 of all ask my readers how the birch-trees got into the 

 bottom of these bogs. I suppose they would answer 

 that peat grows, and that it grew round these birches 

 and hazels, and thus preserved them, quite forgetting 

 that peat will not grow except where it is wet, and that 

 neither birch nor hazel will grow if the ground is at 

 all wet. They also have, perhaps, very little idea of 

 the delicacy of the thin, white, outer skin of the birch 

 bark. Perhaps they imagine that if they cut down a 

 birch or hazel tree, and laid it on the top of a peat-bog, 

 it would gradually sink do^vn of its own weight, or that 

 the peat would grow up round it, and that thus the 

 silvery bark would be preserved; but I dare say most 

 people have also very little idea of the slowness of the 

 growth of peat, and I may mention that this white outer 

 skin of birch bark is just like silver paper, and would not 

 remain attached to the stem more than a very few months, 

 and the birch branch or stem laid on the top of the bog 

 would turn into pulp and disappear long before the peat 

 could grow over it to preserve it. 



It might be argued that, supposing a birch-wood grew 

 at the very foot of a mountain of, say, 2,000 to 3,000 feet 

 high, and that the mountain was covered most of the 

 way up with a deep bed of peat, and that, owing to an 



