34 THE SPIRIT OF THE SOIL 



" Q. i. Whether Diamonds and other Precious 

 Stones grow again after three or four years, in the 

 same places where they have been digged out ? 



"A. Never, or at least as the memory of man can 

 attain to." 



When one turns from the ancient records of the 

 Royal Society to a book published so recently as 

 1912 on the Peat Deposits of Ohio, by Dr. Alfred 

 Dachnowski, it comes as a surprise to read the fol- 

 lowing remark almost at the opening of his first 

 chapter : 



" Exact and systematic study of peat began in 

 Europe in 1750, when various scientific societies 

 offered prizes for memoirs on the origin, formation, 

 and nature of peat. Then, as to-day, some persons 

 held that peat bogs were useless obstacles to com- 

 merce and agriculture; were places of malarious 

 fevers and the causes of spring frosts; while others 

 advanced the idea that peat, if once dug out, would grow 

 again spontaneously ." 



This quotation is, I think, memorable in showing 

 how greatly the oldest of the sciences, agriculture, 

 in certain of its aspects at any rate, lagged behind at 

 a time when the modern world had begun to show 

 an active, intelligent, scientific curiosity into the 

 causes of all sorts of natural phenomena. 



The general conditions under which the deposits 

 of peat were laid down are to-day thoroughly well 

 understood from the general standpoint, though a 

 vast amount of work remains to be done before the 

 various problems connected with peat formation 

 can be regarded as solved. As with most natural 

 substances peat is the name given to a class of 



