452 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS .—K. 
The successful marketing of many species of timber, poles, stakes, pea 
and bean stakes, firewood, Christmas trees, and estate manufactures, such 
as gates and hurdles, demands very special knowledge and application, 
and, in order to save foresters from giving an undue amount of time and 
study to it, co-operation between estates is essential. Such co-operation 
is now being arranged by branches of the Home Grown Timber Marketing 
Association, which is devising several different schemes of marketing. The 
methods adopted by two of these branches are instructive and illustrate the 
difficulties which are being experienced. ‘The Association is also attempting 
to secure more standardisation in methods of measuring and selling timber. 
Improvements in methods of marketing and in the utilisation of timber 
and other woodland products should also result from the work of the new 
National Home Grown Timber Council which has been set up by the 
Forestry Commission in conjunction with the various interests concerned 
and is undertaking investigations with these objects in view. 
SeMI-PopuLar Lecture by Mr. A. C. Forses on Tree planting since the 
Roman occupation (5.0). 
Tuesday, September 10. 
Dr. H. Gopwin.—The conditions of formation of British peats. The 
topogenous peats of the British coasts and of the Fenland basin (10.0). 
An examination of micro and macro fossils of these peats suggests that 
they are all of the niedermoor or Zwischenmoor type. Pollen analyses of the 
submerged peat beds of the British coasts and of moor-log from the North 
Sea show that this peat formation is not referable to any single period. 
Peats of all the periods from pre-Boreal to sub-Atlantic appear to be present. 
The peat beds and even some of the so-called forest beds overlie salt-marsh 
deposits and there is evidence of vegetational succession from salt-marsh 
through brackish water phragmitetum to fen-woodland on peat. These 
peat beds appear to be closely connected in origin with the marine 
transgression. 
The conditions of formation of fenland peats are in many respects similar, 
being closely determined by relative movement of land and sea. Periods 
of marine transgression led to marine conditions, and stability or retro- 
gression led to vegetational succession towards fen-carr and fen woodland, 
often slightly acidic in character. There is no trace of hock-moor. 
Prof. H. OsvALD.—Some notes on peat land vegetation and peat soils in the 
British Isles (10.30). 
In 1925 I classified the European moss! types as follows?: (a) ‘ raised 
mosses ’ with trees ; (b) naked (treeless) ‘ raised mosses ’ ; (c) ‘ flat mosses ’ ; 
(d) ‘ concave mosses’ ; and (e) ‘ cover mosses’; type (a) being the most 
continental and type (e) the most oceanic. Types (d) and (e) are poorly 
represented on the continent of Europe but very frequent in those parts of 
the British Isles which have the most humid climate. On the other hand, 
type (a) is absent from this country, and type (0) is represented only by its 
1 The term ‘ moss’ is here used for the type of plant community forming wet or 
moist acid peat, and dominated either by Sphagnum, or by Eviophorum or Scirpus 
c@spitosus. ‘Moss’ is the regular place name applied to such wet peat vegeta- 
tion in the north of Britain. 
2 The terms are translated here. 
