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CHAP. XLIV. 



On Peat. 



THOUGH peat generally occupies the surface, it is 

 sometimes covered by alluvia, as it occasionally also 

 alternates with them, from causes sufficiently obvious. 

 Inundations often deposit beds of sand and gravel in 

 lakes and oestuaries or on their marshy margins, as 

 their distant repetition produces successions of this na- 

 ture ; while the same thing sometimes happens on sea 

 shores, from the blowing of sand, as in Holland, where 

 the gradual rise of the land, from a distant period, can 

 be traced to this cause. Nor is peat limited to the land. 

 Independently of that which is of marine origin, there 

 are many extensive submarine tracts, on our own coasts 

 as on those of the opposed continent, which have re- 

 sulted from that subsidence of the land described in a 

 former chapter. If I need not note the topography of 

 that which occurs over the whole world wherever the 

 temperature is not too high, the flat tracts of Holland 

 and the Baltic present the largest continuous extent in 

 Europe; while, in our own islands, it abounds most in 

 Scotland and Ireland, in which last, a recent survey has 

 reported a million of acres of u bog." 



Origin, Nature, and Varieties of Peat. 



He who has read the volumes written on this pro- 

 duction, has discovered that it is easy to write largely 

 on a subject without elucidating it, and that the most 

 incapable is always the most interminable writer. It 

 would be a waste of time to examine the mixture of 

 ignorance and mystery by which every writer, without 

 one exception, has laboured to obscure a subject so 



