636 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I7II. 



mind the old woods which I had seen, observed there was not so much as a 

 tree, or appearance of the root of any; but instead of them, the whole bounds, 

 where the wood had stood, was all over a fiat green ground, covered with a 

 plain green moss. I asked the people what became of the wood, and who 

 carried it away? they told me, nobody was at the pains to carry it away; but 

 that it being all overturned from the roots by winds, the trees lay so thick and 

 swerving over one another, that the green moss or fog had overgrown the 

 whole timber ; which they said was occasioned by the moisture that came down 

 from the high hill above it, and stagnated on that plain ; and they said none 

 couW pass over it, because the scurf of the fog would not support them. I 

 would needs try it: and accordingly I fell into the arm-pits, but was imme- 

 diately pulled up by them. Before the year 1699, that whole piece of ground 

 was turned into a common moss; where the country people are digging turf 

 and peats, and still continue so to do. The peats were not of the best, being 

 soft and spongy, but become better and better, and I am informed it now 

 affords good peats. This matter of fact shows both the generation of mosses, 

 and whence it is that many of them are furnished with such timber. 



These highland woods are usually stored with other kinds of timber; as birch 

 alder, ash, besides shrubs and thorns; yet we never find any of these woods 

 remaining in the mosses. What the reason may be, that the fir and oak do 

 not grow in several countries, where they are found so plentifully in the mosses, 

 is matter of inquiry. It seems remarkable, that in a moss near the town of 

 Elgin in Murray, though there is no river nor water that runs into the moss, 

 yet 3 or 4 feet in the moss, there is a sort of small shell-fish, resembling 

 oysters, found numerously in the very body of the peats, and the fish alive 

 within them ; though no such fish is found in any water near the moss, nor in 

 any adjacent river; nor even in the stagnating pits, that are in that moss; but 

 only in the very substance of the turf. 



On the Bogs in Ireland. By Dr, Hans Sloane, Sec. R. S. N° 330, p. 302. 



What the earl of Cromartie observes of the bogs or mosses in Scotland, and 

 the wood found in them, I can confirm, having seen many such in the north 

 of Ireland; where, when the turf diggers have come to the bottom, or firm 

 ground, by having dug out all the earth proper to make turf or peat, and come 

 to the clay or other soil, by draining off the water, then there have appeared 

 roots of fir ti-ees, with their stumps standing a foot or two straight upright, 

 and their branches spread out on every side horizontally on that firm surface ; 

 as if that had been formerly the outward face of the ground, and place of their 

 growth. And I remember to have observed these roots to be sometimes 



