46 FOOTNOTES FROM 



when they fell, forming shallow marshes around the 

 fallen trees. More mosses were developed by this mois- 

 ture, and more moisture was accumulated by these 

 mosses; and thus the mutual process went on, one layer 

 of moss decaying in its lower parts, and increasing by 

 additions to its tops the dead giving birth to the living 

 until at last the fallen trees were completely en- 

 tombed, and a stratum of upwards of twenty feet of 

 solid peat, in some instances, deposited above them. 

 When, on the other hand, the basin-shaped hollows were 

 originally occupied by lakes, the Sphagnum or bog-moss 

 abounded in the waters, and spread so extensively, even 

 from great depths, as through course of time to trans- 

 form the lakes into quaking bogs, which, by the accu- 

 mulation of drift, dust, and rubbish, and the decay of 

 the original plants and the formation of new, became 

 ultimately compressed into solid peat, covered upon the 

 surface with heather, or a green vesture of grass or moss. 

 The Sphagnum or bog-moss by which this great change 

 was effected is of a singularly pale, almost snowy -white 

 colour, a peculiarity exceedingly rare among plants, and 

 sometimes attains a length of six or seven feet in deep 

 water, its large air-cells imparting the necessary buoy- 

 ancy to it. Its structure is in many respects different 

 from that of all other mosses. Its branches are fasci- 

 culate and disposed around the stem in spirals; it has 

 no roots whatever, but floats unattached in an upright 

 position in the water; its cell- walls are perforated, and 

 the leaf-cells contain a well-developed spiral ; while the 

 stem is composed of tissue, which, under the microscope r 

 bears a close resemblance to the glandular structure of 



