11 HAXDY BOOK OF 
dust ; a way-mark, too, indicating traces of forgotten men, 
or implements of husbandry, and affording to the botanist 
and antiquary subjects of the deepest interest. This species 
constitues a considerable porticn of all such peat as abounds 
in the marshes of ^Northern Europe. Peat may consist of 
any among the numerous plants that thrive best in moist 
situations, where the temperature is low, and vegetables 
decompose without putrefying but the Sphafft&trn is by far 
the most abundant, in some portions nearly to the exclusion 
of all others, and possessing the singular property of throw- 
ing up new shoots in the upper part, while the extremities 
are decaying. "Whenever, therefore, woods have been 
destroyed by fire large trees uprooted by sudden storms of 
wind or tracts of once cultivated land made desolate 
embankments broken down, and marshes usurping the 
place of fertilizing streams the Bog-moss rapidly takes 
root and flourishes. 
In warm climates all decaying timber is presently re- 
moved by insects : termites and beetles with boring instru- 
ments set to work ; they perforate the wood in all directions, 
and when their ministry is accomplished, winds disperse 
the fragments to incredible distances. It is otherwise in 
the cold temperature that prevails in our latitudes, and 
numerous examples are on recotd of the usurping powers 
of Bog-moss ; of its beneficial results also, and antiseptic 
property. 
Thus, in Mars Forest, as related by Dr. Eennie, large 
trunks of patriarchal firs, which had fallen through ex- 
treme old age, were soon grown over by this friendly plant. 
We learn, also, that a sudden tornado having overthrown 
a considerable forest near Lochbroom, in Ross-shire, about 
the middle of the seventeenth century, its site was 69 
quickly concealed from the same cause, that in about fifty 
years the inhabitants obtained peat. A similar instance is 
remembered with regard to the wood of Drumlanrig, in 
Dumfriesshire ; and old men tell their children, beside the 
