203 



ticularly the sphagnum palustre, appear to be vegetables which are 

 peculiarly calculated to suffer a conversion into this kind of 

 substance. 



The promptitude with which the species of plants, which I have 

 just enumerated, appear to submit to this change, and their dispo- 

 sition extensively to spread themselves, through every interstice of 

 such peat-bogs as they have possessed themselves of, may perhaps 

 account, in a great measure, for that augmentation of peat-mosses, 

 which the Doctor evidently considers as highly confirmatory of his 

 opinion. The Doctor says, ''It is certain that all mosses have 

 been augmented by an increase of real quick moss smce their first 

 formation. This augmentation/' the Doctor says, " can have 

 happened in no other way than by its increase in the manner of 

 growing vegetables, from the time of its first germination till the 

 present hour." 



To prove that this augmentation is not of growing peat, but of 

 vegetable matters under the influence of the common laws of vege- 

 tation ; and, at the same time, to point out more clearly what seems 

 to me to be the actual circumstance, which appeared to corroborate 

 the Doctor's opinion, I must lay before you the account of this 

 process, as delivered by an eye-witness. 



Dr. King, in a paper presented to the Dublin Society, says, 

 " that Ireland doth abound in moss more than I believe any 

 kingdom, insomuch that it is very troublesome, being apt to spoil 

 fruit-trees and quicksets. This moss is of divers kinds : that which 

 grows in bogs is remarkable ; your light spongy turf is nothing but 

 a congeries of the threads of this moss, before it is sufficiently rotteo 

 (and then the turf looks white, and is light). I have seen it in sucr 

 quantities, and so tough, that the turf spades would not cut it : 

 in the north of Ireland they, by way of joke, call it old wife's tow, 

 and curse her that buried it, when it hinders them in cutting the 



