NORTH UIST. PEAT. 133 



review, as well as in South Uist, that peat is sometimes 

 luminous, a phenomenon analogous to that produced by 

 wood in a certain stage of decomposition. This fact is, I 

 believe, also noticed by some oriental traveller. 



There appears to be great variety in the time which 

 a given mass of this substance requires to accumulate ; as 

 might indeed be conjectured from the various energy 

 of vegetation in different situations. Two or three 

 registers of time are to be found in this country, in the 

 dates of substances lying beneath it, but they can only 

 be considered applicable to the particular places where 

 they exist. 



A Roman road is found on the clay under Moss 

 Flanders in Stirlingshire, a raft of squared timber having 

 also been discovered in the same place. The peat here 

 varies from twenty to forty feet in depth. A road formed 

 of logs of wood was also found under Kincardine moss, 

 together with felled trees laying on the clay substratum, 

 these being probably of the same date with the former. In 

 more recent times Camden has described the park which 

 now lies under Chat moss near Liverpool, and the palings 

 have been recently found in digging into that spot. But 

 it is not my design to enter further into this subject. 



Yet it will not be out of place, after this very slight 

 sketch of the nature of peat, to bestow a few words on its 

 economical details as applied to the purpose of fuel, of 

 which it forms the sole article in these islands. The 

 consumption is unavoidably great, since, independently of 

 the constant demand for cookery, the moisture of the 

 climate renders fire almost as necessary in summer as in 

 winter. Although the total supply may be considered, in 

 a general sense, inexhaustible, some of the islands labour 

 under serious inconveniences from the want of it. Tirey, 

 Canna, lona, and Muck, are in this predicament; which 

 adds considerably to the expense of the tenant, and 

 consequently detracts from the value of the land. A 

 commercial arrangement which should supply these islands 



