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XXVIII.—The Plant Remains in the Scottish Peat Mosses. By Francis J. Lewis, 
F.L.S., Assistant Lecturer in Botany, University of Liverpool. Communicated 
by Professor Grixie, LL.D., F.R.S. (With Six Plates.) 
PATI 
THe Scorrisp .SouTHERN UPLaANps. 
(MS. received May 31, 1905. Read July 8, 1905. Issued separately August 7, 1905.) 
The following paper deals with an investigation of the successive zones of plant 
remains contained in the deeper peat deposits covering areas in the Scottish Southern 
Uplands. The field work was carried on during the summer and early autumn of 1904, 
and the detailed examination of the peat in the laboratory during part of the winter. 
No attempt has been made to work out the detailed flora of the different zones, but atten- 
tion has chiefly been directed to the dominant plant remains found at different horizons 
in the mosses. Whilst the list of. plants from each zone is small, the general facies of 
the flora of any layer can be gauged from the abundant presence of a few characteristic 
plants such as Salix reticulata and Empetrum, or Sphagnum and Eriophorum. Thus, 
while the investigation is incomplete as regards any addition to the history of the 
British Flora, it will, I hope, throw some light upon the succession of vegetation over 
the older peat mosses since their origin. 
Much work has already been done, chiefly by CLEMENT Rerp (1), on the plant remains 
from some of the interglacial and earliest post-glacial deposits in England. The remains 
have chiefly been taken from clay and sand beds, and for that reason would generally 
be more plentiful and better preserved than the remains contained in the peat; for the 
flora of peat mosses is comparatively small, and many square miles are often tenanted by 
a few dominant plants, such as Sphagnum or Eriophorum. Although the plant re- 
mains from the older peat mosses may not add much to our knowledge of the history of 
the British Flora, yet as they date from late glacial times, they will indicate the type of 
conditions which have prevailed both in the lowlands and highlands at each successive 
period down to the present. 
Much has already been written by different observers on the subject of the Scottish 
peat mosses, and is summarised in Professor GErkIE'Ss Prehistoric Europe and need not 
be referred to in detail here. 
The recording of a plant, or set of plants, from a peat moss is of little value without 
a description of the beds which lie above and below the plant remains, the character of 
the flora of the moss, and other features which would help to determine the age of the 
peat. ‘The kind of observations that are needed have been described by CLemuntT Rerp 
(2), who lays stress on the point that observations on the succession of plant remains are 
TRANS. ROY. SOC. EDIN., VOL. XLI. PART III. (NO, 28). 104 
