634 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I7II. 



dig turf and peats. The surface is covered with a heathy scurf, under which 

 there is a black, moist, spongy earth, from 3 or 4 to 7 or 8 feet deep; and in 

 some few places twice or thrice that depth. They cut the heathy scurf with a 

 flat kind of spade, which they force horizontally between the scurf and the 

 spongy earth, and so turn up the scurf in flat thin flakes, which they call turf. 

 This turf, over-run with the small roots of heath, when dried, makes a whole- 

 some brisk fire, but with much ashes, of a whitish, duskish, or reddish colour; 

 always the whiter, as it contains more of the woody roots 



The black spongy earth, which is under the turf, they cut out in oblong 

 squares, w^ith iron spades made of that shape, about 8 or 9 inches long, and 

 about 4 or 5 inches broad ; and as the men cut them up, the weaker men, 

 women, and children, carry them in small wheel-barrows, scattering them on 

 some dry ground, to be dried by the sun and wind ; some become harder, some 

 softer, according to the nature of the mould, or earth; the more solid, the 

 better fire; and those are less esteemed which are more spongy. And when 

 they have cut off* one stratum of 4 or 5 inches deep, they proceed downward to 

 another, till at last they come to the hard channel, unless they be stopped by 

 water; which also they usually drain off, by making a trench to some descent, if 

 they can, and if they cannot, there the water stagnates. 



And such wasted pits, where water hinders them from cutting the spongy 

 earth to the bottom, will in a good number of years be filled up again with new 

 ground of spongy earth; which in progress of time will come to the consistence 

 of peat moss, as at first, and a scurfy heath turf will at last grow on the top 

 of it. 



I have observed, that peat pits, which have been dug since I remember, have 

 grown up again with new peats; and that sometimes oftener than once in the 

 same pits, some mosses growing in shorter time than others. But I have ob- 

 served also, that when they dig the peats to the channel, or bottom, and in places 

 where the water runs oflT, and does not stagnate, that the mosses did not grow, 

 nor renew there again. Which induced me to order my tenants, not to cut the 

 mosses to the channel, nor in very large openings, but rather in smaller pits, 

 that they may grow again more hastily ; and the event has answered my design. 

 But within these few days. Sir Robert Adaire told me, that without cutting the 

 mosses in the method of pits, but by cutting in fully to the channel, and by 

 laying the heathy turf, which is cut ofi^ the top of the moss, on the channel, 

 so as to cover it over, that in progress of time a moss would grow there again, 

 but not so readily as in the pits. 



I never observed any of these mosses, which did not lie on plains, though 

 the heathy or heathry turf over-spreads the faces and declivities of the moun- 



