228 
ON SOILS. 
DEFINITE APPROPRIATE TERMS INDISPENSABLE. 
We have been favoured with a letter from a highly respectable correspondent 
noticing- our article on Soils, vol. ii. p. 187 to 192, and approving of our proposed 
alteration of terms, particularly as applied to that very valuable species of earth which 
within the last few years has been improperly designated Peat. If the reader take 
the trouble to review the article in question, he will perceive that the earth to which 
the names of bog-earth, peat, sandy and turfy-peat, have been and are applied, is 
that in which our native heaths are found to grow and nourish. We will re-copy a 
few lines from p. 191 : " All these terms are applicable only to heath mould ; and 
they express the varying texture of that material. The sandy heath-soil of Bagshot 
is of a greyish black tint, it contains a very great proportion of pure white sand, 
with perhaps scarcely one tenth part " (of the hundred) " of black, decayed, 
vegetable matter. The best heath-soil contains much fibrous matter, and is of a 
black or brownish hue, which depends upon the peculiar nature of the vegetable 
matter. All these soils abound with pure white sand ; hence, their peculiar appli- 
cability to plants whose roots are very fibrous, tender, and delicate." 
By the terms peat and bog-earth, writers have always intended to express heath- 
soil, in contradistinction to the real bog-peat dug from turbaries. Gardeners 
rarely think of the latter; if they do, they know it to be inert, in consequence of 
its being the production of a swamp. But we must not wholly reject this soil, 
for we have seen proof sufficient that the mass, after being exposed for years to the 
air, will bring some plants to the highest state of rich verdure. We have seen and 
grown Thunbergia in a pot of pure bog-peat (20 years old before it was used), the 
leaves of which became of an intense green, and almost double the breadth of those 
cultivated in loamy soils. 
We also admit that the heath-soils differ one from the other ; that some speci- 
mens are quite loose and sandy, with little appearance of fibre ; while others are 
firm in texture, come up in lumps of a buttery adhesive consistence, which may 
almost sanction the mistake of confounding heath or moor-soil with bog-peat. 
This unctuous, adhesive mould, is however the product of the surface : it 
abounds with heath-roots and grass, and, chemically examined, it is found remote 
from the bog-soil dug far below the surface. It may however require additions of 
pure siliceous sand. 
We are very glad to be again called upon to re-urge this subject, and trust our 
horticultural friends, one and all, will reform this abuse of terms — not in part but 
altogether. Let us define our terms, write and speak correctly, and not adopt one 
appellation when we mean to express another. 
We were the first, we believe, to write urgently on this subject, and to make it 
an affair of consequence : it is but just however to observe, that mention was made, 
in a short article of the Gardener's Magazine, of the confusion of terms; and 
directions given thereby to distinguish the inert substance of the bog from the true 
and valuable sandy soil of the moor or heath. 
