502 



ENCLOSING OF FOSSILS IN PEAT, 



[Ch. XLIV. 



liaAdiig assumed a 



unimpaired.^ In tlie Pliilosopliical Transactions we find an 

 example recorded of the bodies of two persons having been 

 buried in moist peat, in Derbyshire, in 1674, about a yard 

 deep, which were examined twenty- eight years and nine 

 months afterwards j ^ the colour of their skin was fair and 

 natural, their flesh soft as that of persons newly dead.'f 



Among other analogous facts we may mention, that m 

 digging a pit for a well near Dulverton, in Somersetshire, 

 many pigs were found in various postures, still entire. Their 

 shape was well preserved, the skin, which retained the hair, 



dry, membranous appearance. Their 

 whole substance was converted into a white, friable, lami- 

 nated, inodorous, and tasteless substance ; but which, when 

 exposed to heat, emitted an odour precisely similar to broiled 

 bacon. J 



Cause of the antiseptic property of peat. — We naturally ask 

 whence peat derives this antiseptic property ? It has been 

 attributed by some to the carbonic and gallic acids which 

 issue from decayed wood, as also to the presence of charred 

 wood in the lowest strata of many peat-mosses, for charcoal 

 is a powerful antiseptic, and capable of purifying water already 

 putrid. Vegetable gums and resins also may operate in the 

 same way.§ 



The tannin 



occasionally present in peat is the produce, 

 says Dr. MacCuUoch, of tormentilla, and some other plants ; 

 but the quantity he thinks too small, and its occurrence too 

 casvial, to give rise to effects of any importance. He hints 

 that the soft parts of animal bodies, preserved in peat-bogs, 

 may have been converted into aclipocire by the action of 

 water merely. 



Miring of quadrupeds. — The manner, however, in which 

 peat contributes to preserve, for indefinite periods, the harder 

 parts of terrestrial animals, is a subject of more immediate 



There are two ways in which 

 animals become occasionally buried in the peat of marshy 

 grounds ; they either sink down into the semifluid mud, 



interest to the geologist. 



^ Dr. Rennie, on Peat, p. 521 ; where 

 several other instances are referred to. 

 t Phil. Trans, vol. xxxviii. 1734. 



I Dr. Rennie, on Peat, &e., p. 521. 

 Ibid. p. 531. 

 Syst. of Geol.vol. ii. pp. 340—346 



