Bogs, Their Nature and Origin. 



39 



myrsinites, phylicifolia and reticulata), besides other flowering 

 plants, twenty-eight species in all. In Ireland and elsewhere, we 

 find the remains of animals and men where they have been 

 preserved by the antiseptic action of the water. Several perfect 

 skeletons of the extinct Irish elk (Megaceros hibernicus) have 

 been dug up during peat excavation. 



Little or no attention has been paid to the scientific study 

 of bog deposits in America. A start has been made by Cole- 

 man and Penhallow in Canada; Ganong, Transeau and Jeffreys 

 in the United States. Dr. Pehr Olsson-Seffer suggests the word 

 Telmatology for bog study, which is pursued by the use of a 

 spade and a peat auger, which consists of a steel pipe one and 

 one-half m. in length and about four m. in diameter. The lower 

 end of the pipe is closed with a piston which is pointed at the 

 apex and can be lowered or raised in the pipe with a steel rod 

 managed from the upper end. With these tools samples are 

 removed from different bog levels for study and comparison. 

 These samples can then be treated with Gunnar Anderson's nitric 

 acid treatments, or by Lagerheim's oxalic acid method to bleach 

 the peat, after which the fossils can be washed out. In a pre- 

 liminary paper*, which should be read by all interested in the 

 study of bogs, Pehr Olsson-Seffer gives the latest and best 

 method for studying and preserving materials collected as 

 samples from peat bogs. 



Not only can we estimate the character of the flora which 

 preceded our present one, by the study of peat bogs, but we 

 can ascertain much of importance concerning the men who 

 lived contemporaneously with the different types of vegetation. 

 Much that we know of the Viking Age| has been obtained in 

 a study of the Scandinavian bogs. From the bog discoveries 

 it is known how the people were dressed, as well as the character 

 of their riding equipment, agricultural implements, cooking and 

 household utensils, wagons, tools, offensive and defensive weap- 

 ons, and sea-going vessels. Many of the objects, Du Chaillu 

 says, appear to be of Greek and Roman origin, so that we can 

 approximate closely to the date when the objects were in use, 

 and consequently the taste and manner of living of the period. 



* Olsson-Seffer, Pehr. Examination of Organic Remains in Postglacial Deposits. 

 American Naturalist XXXVII : 785-797. 1903. 



t The reader should consult Du Chaillu, Paul. "The Viking Age," I : 193, Chapter 

 XII, for details as to the important ethnologic and archeologic finds. 



