38 Hie part that burns away 



Look at a piece of peat and notice liow very fibrous 

 it is, quite unlike leaf mould. When it is dry peat easily 

 burns and is much used as fuel in parts of Scotland, 

 Wales and Ireland. It is cut in blocks during the 

 spring, left to dry in heaps during summer, and then 

 carried away in autumn. Fig. 19 shows a peat bog 

 with cutting going on. Peat does not easily catch 

 light and the fires are generally kept burning all night ; 

 there is no great flame such as you get with a coal fire, 

 but still there is quite a nice heat. 



Peat has a remarkable power of absorbing water. 

 Fill an egg-cup with peat, packing it as tightly as you 

 possibly can, and then put it under water and leave for 

 some days. The peat becomes very wet and swells con- 

 siderably, overflowing the cup just like the clay did on 

 p. 12. After long and heavy rains peat in bogs swells 

 up so much that it may become dangerous ; if the bog is 

 on the side of a hill, the peat may overflow and run down 

 the hill like a river, carrying everything before it. Such 

 overflows sometimes occur in Ireland and they used to 

 occur in the north of England ; you can read about one 

 on Pendle Hill in Harrison Ainsworth's Lancashire 

 Witches. But they do not take place when ditches are 

 cut in the bog so that the water can flow away instead 

 of soaking in ; this has been done in England. 



This great power of absorbing water and other liquids, 

 so terrible when it leads to overflows, enables peat to be 

 put to various uses, and a good deal of it is sold as 

 peat-moss^ for use in stables. 



In the ditches of a peat bog red slimy masses can 

 often be found. They look just like rusty iron, and in 

 fact they do contain a good deal of iron, but there are 

 also a number of tiny little living things present. The 



