678 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part IU 



4189. Covering the surface of peat bogs with earth has been practised in several parts of 

 Scotland. Clay, sand, gravel, shells, and sea ooze, two or three inches thick, or more, 

 have been used, and land, originally of no value, has thus been rendered worth from 21. 

 to 3/. and even 41. per acre. The horses upon tliis land, must either be equipped with 

 wooden clogs, or the work performed in frosty weather, when the surface of the moss is 

 hard. Coarse obdurate clay (provincially till), is peculiarly calculated for this process, 

 as, when it is blended with peat, and some calcareous matter, it contains all the proper- 

 ties of a fertile soil. {Cli/desdale Report, ip. 150, note.) This is certainly an expensive 

 method of improving land, unless the substance to be laid upon it, is within 500 yards 

 distance : but where it can properly be done, the moss thus obtains solidity, and after it 

 has been supplied with calcareous earth, it may be cultivated, like other soils, in a rotation 

 of white and green crops. In the neighborhood of populous towns, where the rent of 

 land is high, the covering substance may be conveyed from a greater distance than 500 

 yards. (Code.) 



4190. Rolling peaty surfaces has been found to improve them. The greatest defect of 

 soft soils is, that the drought easily penetrates them, and they become too open. The 

 roller is an antidote to that evil, and the expense is the only thing that ought to set bounds 

 to the practice of this operation. It also tends to destroy those worms, grubs, and 

 insects, with which light and fenny land is apt to be infested. The roller for such soils 

 ought not to be heavy, nor of a narrow diameter. If it be weighty, and the diameter 

 small, it sinks too much where the pressure falls, which causes the soft moss to rise 

 before and behind the roller, and thus, instead of consolidating, it rends the soil. A 

 gentle pressure consolidates moss, but too much weight has a contrary effect. A roller 

 for moss ought therefore to be formed of wood, the cylinder about four feet diameter, 

 and mounted to be drawn by two or three men. Three small rollers 

 working in one frame, [Jig. 542.), have sometimes been so 

 drawn. If horses are employed, they ought to have clogs or 

 pattens, if likely to sink. The oftener the rolling is performed, 

 on spongy soils as long as the crops of corn or grass will admit 

 of it, the better, and the more certain is the result. 



4191. An edctensive tract of moss in the county of Lancashire has 

 been recently improved by the celebrated Roscoe of Liverpool, in a very spirited and 

 skilful manner. Chatmoss in that county is well known ; its length is about six miles, 

 its greatest breadth about three miles, and its depth may be estimated from ten to 

 xipwards of thirty feet. It is entirely composed of the substance well known by the 

 name of peat, being an aggregate of vegetable matter, disorganized and inert, but pre- 

 served by certain causes from putrefaction. On the surface it is light and fibrous, but 

 becomes more dense below. On cutting to a considerable depth, it is found to be black, 

 compact, and heavy, and in many respects resembling coal. There is not throughout 

 the whole moss the least intermixture of sand, gravel, or other material, the entire sub- 

 stance being a pure vegetable. About 1820, Roscoe began to improve Trafford moss, 

 a tract of three hundred acres, lying two miles east of Chatmoss ; and his operations on 

 it seem to have been so successful as to encourage him to proceed with Chatmoss. In 

 the improvement of the latter, he found it unnecessary to incur so heavy an expense for 

 drainage as he had done in the former. From observing that where the moss had been 

 dug for peat, the water had drawn towards it from a distance of fifty to a hundred yards, 

 he conceived that if, each drain had to draw the water only twenty-five yards, they would, 

 within a reasonable time, undoubtedly answer the purpose. The whole of the moss was 

 therefore laid out on the following plan. 



4192. A main road, Roscoe states, " was first carried nearly from east to west, through 

 the whole extent of my portion of the moss. This road is about three miles long and 

 thirty-six feet wide. It is bounded on each side by a main drain, seven feet wide and 

 six feet deep, from which the water is conveyed, by a considerable fall , to the river. 

 From these two main drains, other drains diverge, at fifty yards distance from each other, 

 and extend from each side of the road to the utmost limits of the moss. Thus, each field 

 contains fifty yards in front to the road, and is of an indefinite length, according as the 

 boundary of the moss varies. These field-drains are four feet wide at the top, one foot 

 at the bottom, and four feet ^.nd a half deep. They are kept carefully open, and, as 

 far as my experience hitherto goes, I believe they will sufficiently drain the moss, without 

 having recourse to underdraining, which I have never made use of at Chatmoss, except 

 in a very few instances, when, from the lowness of the surface, the water could not rea- 

 dily be gotten off without open channels, which might obstruct the plough." 



4193. The cultivation of the moss then proceeds in the following manner: " After 

 setting fire to the heath and herbage on the moss, and burning it down as far as practica- 

 ble, I plough a thin sod or furrow, with a very sharp horse-plough, which I burn in small 

 lieaps and dissipate : considering it of little use but to destroy the tough sods of the 

 riophora, nardus stricta; and other plants, whose matted roots are almost imperishable. 



