484 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



For my purpose it will be sufficient to give the results arrived 

 at by Steenstrup from a study of the Danish peat, together with 

 those obtained by Nathorst in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, 

 and by Blytt in Norway. I shall then refer shortly to the 

 observations of Fliche in France, and of Martins and Heer in 

 Switzerland. 



The peat-bogs of Northern Europe repose generally upon 

 deposits of glacial and fluvio-glacial origin — boulder-clay, sand 

 and gravel, and loss. These deposits may be said to cloak with 

 an almost continuous covering the vast low-lying regions that 

 extend along the borders of the North Sea and the Baltic, 

 sometimes forming wide plains with only a few gentle undula- 

 tions, at other times rising into low hills and hummocks. They 

 preserve a dreary monotony of outline over some thousands of 

 square miles. In Holland, Denmark, and Northern Germany, 

 enormous tracts of country are covered with heath and bog — 

 which, although they are being continually encroached upon by 

 agriculturists, still form one of the most extensive areas of un- 

 cultivated ground in Europe. But the evidence supplied by the 

 bogs shows that the land has not always been so bare. The 

 great pine forests which still exist in many places in the mari- 



Dau : Neues Handbuch iiber den Torf, 1823. 

 ,, Ueber die Torfmoore Seelands, 1829. 



Dazel : Ueber Torf, desscn Entstehung, Gewinnung, und Nutzung, 1795. 



Degner : Dissertatio Physica de Turfs, etc., 1729. 



De Luc : Lettres physiques et morales sur Vhistoire de la terre et I'homme, 1779 ; 

 contains accounts of peat and buried trees of North Germany, Holland, etc. 



Eiseln : Handbuch zur Kenntniss des Torfwesens, 1802. 



Grisebach : Ueber die Bildung des Torfs in den Emsmooren, 1846. 



Lesquereux : Bull. Soc. Sci. Nat. Neuchatel, 1847, vol. i. p. 472. 



Lindeberg and Olbers : Om Bohuslens Torfinossar. 



Olafsen : Dennemarks Brandselvasen, 1811. 



Riem : Abhandlung vom gesammten Torfwesen, 1794. 



Schinz-Gessner : Der Torf, seine Entstehung, Natur, und Benutzung, etc., 1857. 



Senft : Die Humus, Marseh-, Torf-, und Limonit-Bildungen, etc., 1862, 



Steenstrup : ' ' Geognostisk-geologiske Undersogelse af Skovmoserne Vidnesdam 

 og Lillemose i det nordlige Sjelland," K. Danslc. Vidensk.-Selbsk. Afh., 

 1841 ; Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1861, p. 304 ; Bull. Congres 

 Intern. d'Archeol. Freh., 1869 ; Lecture on the Antiquity of Man (by Prof. 

 T. R. Jones, 1877, p. 10). 



Wiegmann ; Ueber die Entstehung, Bildung, und das Wesen des Torfes, 1837. 



