64 BRITISH MOSSES. 



The overthrow by storms has, again, been suggested as 

 the cause of this wholesale destruction ; and the fact that 

 in some of the peat bogs of the west of Scotland the trees 

 that have fallen lie to the north or north-east, and in some 

 of those in Holland to the south-east, in the direction 

 of the prevailing winds in those countries respectively, 

 affords some reason to believe that wind has given the 

 coup de grace to the dying trees, and determined the 

 direction of their fall. But it is much more likely that 

 the work of the wind should be confined to this final 

 overthrow of the decaying trees than that successive 

 forests in full strength should have been swept from the 

 face of vast tracts of Europe by the agency of wind 

 alone. Moreover, in some cases the trunks as well as 

 the bases and roots of the trees are found standing or 

 buried in the bogs. 



Allowing that some or all of these agencies may have 

 had their part in the destruction of the forests, I believe 

 that the growth of Sphagnum has been the greatest factor 

 in the work of destruction. " To the chilling effect of the 

 wet bog Mosses in their upward growth must be attri- 

 buted," says Mr. James Geikie, " the overthrow of by 

 far the greater portion of the buried timber in our peat 



In a letter written by Lord Cromarty, in 1710, on Peat 

 Mosses, and published in the twenty-seventh volume of 

 the Philosophical Transactions, we get a curious account 

 of the swallowing up of a forest by a peat bog. In 

 1651 the Earl saw in the parish of Lochburn (or, as 

 Walker says, at Lock Broom, in West Boss), a plain 



