CLOTHED WITH VEGETATION. 59 



bits of wood that they heaped up for their abodes ages 

 ago. 



Some of these heaps which have been cut into by ditch- 

 ing, measure as much as four feet high; but the moss and 

 other material have grown up around them since they 

 were made, building the meadow so high that the beavers' 

 homes can be found only by digging through ancient peat.* 



Another impressive growth of moss, aided by various 

 peaty accumulations, is the bog which Doane Street crosses 

 a few hundred yards before it reaches the Hingham line. 

 The road kept settling down through the bog year by year 

 as the gravel was carted on, and the county commission- 

 ers found upon examination that this vegetable deposit was 

 nineteen feet deep. Other swamps in the town have been 

 built up in a similar way. If Breadencheese Swamp, for 

 example, lying in Henry M. Whitney's estate in the north- 

 ern part of the town, were examined, the work of mosses 

 would be still further witnessed in the making of Cohasset. 



Very lively peat will grow as fast as a foot in a century, 

 but ours may not have grown a quarter as fast. Neverthe- 

 less, a very considerable amount of our good soil is the 

 product of moss. 



The rich brown velvet and the spongy gray beds of many 

 varieties are not merely to lend beauty to the woods, but 

 to hold moisture and to furnish a fertile mould that will en- 

 courage the seeds of higher plants in their sprouting days. 

 There is a plant very closely allied to the mosses called 

 liverwort, which grew in moist places, and which has been 

 esteemed as a liver medicine because of the fancied re- 

 semblance of its leaf to the shape of a liver. It is some- 

 times called " scale moss " from the appearance of its 

 leaves upon the stem. 



The most prized of all for human uses is the club moss, or 



* Ira B. Pratt has called my attention to these interesting heaps of sticks with the 

 beaver teeth marks, many of which he has found while ditching near the Reach. 

 The wood is all decayed and falls to pieces when exposed a few moments to the air. 



