DR. ANGUS SMITH ON PEAT. 339 



the surface, we know something of the danger as well as 

 expense. A peat-bog 10 feet deep will hold as much 

 water as a reservoir of the same dimensions 7f feet deep ; 

 it requires no digging, and may be used for shooting over 

 and for health. It retains the water better in summer 

 than our reservoirs ; it is in fact a covered reservoir, and 

 would make a valuable covering to those hills which have 

 works below continually demanding fresh streams. 



One of my proposals therefore is to grow our water- 

 reservoirs instead of digging them. 



Drying up Swamps. 



If peat can be so readily planted and grown so rapidly, 

 we have before us an entirely new field of industry ; we 

 can make dry land out of swamps. These places are 

 numerous, and are in almost all cases absolutely useless, 

 and in most injurious. We may be able to set in motion 

 a peat-growth which will in a very moderate time make 

 such an amount of dry material that the water-level will 

 be far out of ready reach. Indeed we do see this done 

 constantly, as the extracts given here show ; and we have 

 only to carry out the idea further, and, instead of making 

 dykes to keep out the water of large portions of, say, 

 Holland or of our own fenny districts, set in motion a 

 peat-growth which would in many places be useful. The 

 cases in which this is possible are, to my mind, very nume- 

 rous; and the expense would not be equal to the main- 

 tenance of pumps. The plan would raise the level of 

 already enclosed fields, and growth might be allowed to 

 proceed till the exact amount of moisture required was 

 obtained. The next question, of course, that will be asked 

 is, What would be the value of such land ? That would 

 vary ; there are cases where it would be a great benefit 

 merely to have something as solid as peat to w r alk upon. 

 Of course we must remember that this cannot be done over 



