FERNS AND MOSSES. 21 
aid of gum or glue, and manufactured into that coarse, but 
solid felt, known in Northern Asia from the earliest ages, and 
thus noticed by the poet : 
" The careful pastor shears their hoary beards, 
p And eases of their hair the loaded herds ; 
Their camelots, warm in tents, the soldiers hold, 
And shield the shivering mariners from cold." 
Goats' -hair, therefore, was the chief material used in 
ancient British vestments, till an improved condition of 
society led to the adoption, from Gaul, of the valuable arts 
of dressing wool, and of spinning and weaving cloth. Tra- 
dition tells, that such were brought into the island by a 
Belgic colony, about a century previous to the first invasion 
by the Romans. Authentic history relates, that an imperial 
manufactory of woollen cloth was established at Vinta Bul- 
garum, now "Winchester. 
Canoes, stone hatchets, and stone arrow-heads, evidently 
of British manufacture, have been found embedded in moss ; 
as also skeletons of a gigantic elk. 
Before dismissing this very interesting portion of our sub- 
ject, we shall briefly refer to the origin of bog-iron ore, 
which is found occasionally at the bottom of peat-mosses. 
The frequency of this curious substance is familiar to the 
mineralogist, and its formation was long a matter of discus- 
sion, until the researches of Ehrenberg seem to have re- 
moved the difficulty. He observed, in the marshes about 
Berlin, a deep ochre-yellow or red substance, which, upon 
becoming dry after the water had subsided, closely resembled 
oxide of iron. 
BOG-IRON ORE 2000 TIMES MAGNIFIED. 
"When submitted to a powerful microscope, the whole was 
