118 Rev. John Walker o» Greenlaw. 



its formation wliich will satisfy, it humbly appears to me, 

 the conditions as they exists and may be observed and tested. 

 The suggestion, if my recollection be distinct — ^for I have not 

 the paper beside me — is not very lucid — is confused by being 

 mixed up vrith irrelevant matters ; but the solution which it 

 affords is direct and simple, and sufficient, satisfying com- 

 pletely several of the conditions of the deposit — indeed all of 

 of them that I have been able to ascertain with certainty. 

 Assuming that wood brought together by water is, as with 

 coal, the nucleus, or even to a greater degree, the mass of our 

 peat mosses, he regards the edge or outer side of that field of 

 wood as supplying the protection which sand or gravel carried 

 by a current over it would require in order to settle down 

 and be at rest. The various debris which running water 

 carried with it over the surface of the wood field would thus 

 accumulate under the shelter of its edge until it reached the 

 level of the wood, and entirely in the same way as hills of 

 similar debris which we find plentifully deposited under the 

 shelter of rocks, and forming what are called " tails " to 

 them. Now if we suppose the flow of water to have been 

 withdrawn — made to cease — and the wood left to decay, and 

 cover itself with its peculiar vegetation in a marsh, it will 

 be felt that it would sink as it became consolidated — its 

 surface would become depressed, as it is now, under the level 

 of the drift Avhich would gradually assume its present pro- 

 portion as a ridge or kaim. 



A theory having more perhaps to commend it at its first 

 statement, but really in the conditions inadmissible, proposes 

 to explain the formation of the deposit by the action of 

 two nearly parallel and converging currents. But while it 

 seems not easy to advert to the tract of land and believe 

 that two streams of water so related to each other and 

 co-operating could flow over it in the line of the kaims, there 

 is a farther objection to it which appears to me to be con- 

 clusive. On this theory the lower base of the kaims would 

 be spread widely, and would underlie the peat moss for some, 

 perhaps a great distance. This however, is not the case. The 

 peat has been cut plentifully close to the edge of the kaims, 

 and it passes down, as beside a wall, to the white sand which 

 forms the floor of the peat moss. 



The range of the kaims does not terminate at the north- 

 west point of Dogden Moss. On reaching that point they 

 turn southward and covering the west end of the moss, and 

 throwing a branch called the '^ Battle Hills " along deep moss 



