770 GEOLOGY. 



upon the date of those deposits. In the Irish bogs it is very common to find the 

 remains of animals of which no living specimens now exist in that country, nor have 

 existed within the era of authentic history horns and skulls of the elk and deer so 

 that their age goes back to a remote period. 



Peat-mosses have long been remarked for their antiseptic properties, or the power of 

 preserving animal substances from putrefaction ; some striking instances of which are on 

 record. Two human bodies, buried in moist peat, in Derbyshire, in 1674, about a yard 

 below the surface, were found, nearly twenty-nine years afterwards, with the colour of 

 the skin fair and natural, and the flesh as soft as that of persons newly deceased. In 

 June 1747, a Lincolnshire labourer, digging peat on one of the moors, discovered the 

 body of a woman, a lady of the olden time, at the depth of six feet. The head and feet 

 were nearly bent together, and the skin, nails, and hair were in a high state of preserv 

 ation. She wore leathern shoes or sandals, each cut out of a single piece of tanned ox 

 hide, folding about the foot and heel, and piked with iron. Chaucer mentions these piked 

 shoes as part of the costume in his time ; and in the reign of Edward IV. they had so 

 increased in length, that all who wore them beyond a certain length were to be mulcted, 

 or have them cut shorter, in passing in or out of the city gates of London. For several 

 centuries, therefore, the body had certainly lain in the peat. 



We have mentioned the semi-fluid condition of many peat-mosses below the surface 

 crust, giving them a motion like that of a boat in water when subject to pressure. Hence, 

 when overcharged in consequence of excessive rains, these swollen mosses have not unfre- 

 quently burst ; and when occupying a high situation or declivity, their contents have 

 been discharged with great violence upon a lower level, like a current of lava streaming 

 from a volcano. Several cases of these inundations have occurred in recent times, the 

 most remarkable of which transpired on the 16th of December 1772, in the instance of 

 the Solway moss. This moss, already noticed as having entombed a troop of horse, occu 

 pied an area of 1300 acres, stretching along an eminence elevated from fifty to eighty feet 

 above the fertile plain between it and the river Esk. The surface, of some consistency, 

 vibrated to the tread, and might be easily pushed through with a pole, which descended 

 without difficulty from fifteen to twenty feet, showing the soft and watery state of the 

 subjacent matter. After greater rains than had happened for nearly two centuries, the 

 surface of the moss rose, owing to the waters accumulated in it not being able to find a 

 vent, and at length broke, discharging itself upon the hapless valley of the Esk, an 

 entirely new phenomenon in the life of its simple shepherds. What added to their terror 

 and danger was the hour of the eruption, about eleven on the night of the 15th, when 

 the inhabitants of the farms and hamlets of Eskdale had retired to their beds. Some were 

 awakened by the strange noise of the eruption ; others by the cry of alarm which speedily 

 rang through the valley ; and all awoke from their sleep to encounter in their cottages, 

 or immediately upon opening their doors, a slowly rolling, resistless, and inexplicable 

 deluge of black mud. The members of thirty-five families saved their lives with diffi 

 culty, but lost their agricultural produce, with many of their cattle ; and when the morn 

 ing shed light upon the scene, instead of fields, hedge-rows, and cottage gardens, there 

 was a dark slimy torrent of half-consolidated peat earth, almost wholly covering some of 

 the houses, and reaching up to the thatch of others. About four hundred acres were 

 buried ; and but for the crawling motion of the semi-solid mass, and the occurrence of an 

 intervening "gap" or broad gully, which diverted into an opposite direction a large 

 quantity of the invading matter, but few of the Eskdale shepherds would have survived 

 the calamity. Though these sudden inroads are few and far between, yet the peat-mosses 

 steadily advance in extent and thickness by natural increase, where the conditions essen 

 tial to their growth remain unaltered ; and in a series of years great changes are effected 



