On Heath-Mould and Peat. '^S5 



Art. IX. On Heath-Mould and Peat. B}'^ J. D. 



Sir, 



In writings and conversations on gardening, I have usually 

 found the synonymous terms peat, peat-earth, and bog-earth, 

 employed to designate that particular kind of soil in which 

 the British species of heath, the Cape heaths, and the North 

 American plants, thrive so perfectly. That this kind of 

 soil, which, till taught better by some correspondent, I shall 

 call heath-mould, is distinct enough from peat, the following 

 characters of each will evince. * 



Heath-mould is the soil which occurs on heaths; sites not 

 extremely wet and low, as bogs are, but usually elevated, and, 

 in consequence of their elevation, well drained, and exposed 

 to the scorching suns of summer and the withering blasts 

 of winter. The stratum or layer of soil is usually less than 

 12 inches in thickness, lying on a stony subsoil, and both 

 the soil and subsoil of so sterile a quality as to forbid tillage ; 

 yielding usually a tough thickly woven turf, and heath, or 

 ling, and furze in abundance, with occasional brambles, and 

 low stunted specimens of other species of shrubs or trees. 

 This stratum, taken off so as to leave the stones bare, forms, 

 when partially decomposed and comminuted, the invaluable 

 and indispensable soil for innumerable plants of the garden ; 

 and is composed of the decaying turf with its spongy inter- 

 woven roots, a highly friable black soil, and a plentiful 

 admixture of small-grained white sand. The blackness of 

 the soil is, doubtless, partly owing to the perpetually pro- 

 gressive rotting of the exuviae continually supplied by the 

 growing turf, and which decaying exuviae, besides the black- 

 ness, give to the soil also, in no small degree, the pro- 

 perties of leaf or vegetable mould. From, then, ,the spongy 

 masses of vegetable fibres, the friable nature of the soil in 

 itself, the decomposed vegetable matter, and the large pro- 

 portion of white sand which heath-mould contains, arises its 

 peculiar eligibility for all plants with delicate hairlike roots, 

 and consequently for the £ricese verae, the jEriceae ^hodora- 

 ceae, &c., whose roots have, more aptly than elegantly, been 

 compared to shag tobacco. 



Peat-earth, or bog-earth, on the contrary, is the soil yielded 

 by fens, turbaries, bogs, and morasses. It constitutes almost 

 the entire soil of the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, 

 and is, in fact, the soil forming the turf, of which so many 

 millions are annually dug, sold, and burnt, as an article of 

 domestic fuel, in those counties. Peat, instead of being in a 

 thin stratum, forms a stratum always of considerable, sometimes 



