282 DR. ANGUS SMITH ON PEAT. 



' Prehistoric Scotland/ he says that stones showing the 

 action of fire have been found, along with stakes which 

 seem to indicate circular dwellings. He adds that they 

 are under eight or ten feet of moss, under which is a foot 

 of soil before coming to the gravel on which the cairns of 

 the neighbourhood rest. This, he considers, indicates a 

 period before the Romans. I suppose the question of the 

 age of peat is quite unsettled. I am inclined to believe 

 that a moss may be ^ery old or comparatively recent. We 

 scarcely give the peat-moss fair play, although in this case 

 I do think the lower moss, being very black, must be old. 

 When thinking of this subject, I turned to the c HandAvor- 

 terbuch der Chemie/ and found opinions there which it 

 may be interesting to quote. An analysis by Liebig of a 

 Lemna from a peat-moss in Switzerland is given ; and his 

 remark is mentioned, that the water in which it grew con- 

 tained all the ingredients required for feeding it. It is 

 inferred that one can easily understand why peat should 

 grow under such circumstances on the most barren ground. 

 When discussing the time required to grow, it is said that 

 between Olching and Loehausen, near Munich, a surface of 

 peat was burnt, and after sixteen years there was a depth 

 of seven inches above the burnt part. In Erdinger Moss, 

 in Bavaria, three feet of turf is found made in old cut-out 

 beds. The newer turf is coarser than the old. ' In Lang- 

 moos an old road is covered i| feet.' c If the growth of 

 turf is carefully attended to, it may become of great value/ 

 Sprengel says that ' under favourable circumstances a peat- 

 moss (Torfmoor) will produce more combustible matter 

 than the best forest/ In Liebig's 'Agricultural Chemis- 

 try ' he shows that wood- and meadow-land grow remark- 

 ably near the same amount of dry woody fibre — about one 

 ton and one fifth per annum per acre. 



" If we suppose an acre of ground to be covered with solid 

 fir wood an inch thick, it would weigh about fifty-five tons ; 



