756 
Peat and its Products. 
In Devonshire, the Torbay submerged forest comprises peat beds that 
have yielded Roman remains, and that rest on clay or estuarine mud. On 
Dartmoor, near Tavistock, &c., there is peat in places thirty feet thick, and 
a peat naphtha company was established at Prineetown . 1 
At Poole Harbour (Dorset) a submarine forest has been observed, and 
peat has been dug at Knighton Bottom, near Bournemouth. 
Peat occurs in the Forest of Wolmer and in the New Forest (Hants), and 
in the Lewes and Arundel Levels (Sussex). Near Newbury (Berks) the 
peat, ten feet thick in places, has been dug for fuel, &e. 
There is a submerged peat bed at Bawdsley, Suffolk, and peat beds occur 
in the alluvium of the Orwell Valley. 
In Cambridgeshire, peat has been dug near Chatteris, at Coveney and 
Burwell Fen ; and in Lincolnshire, at Billinghay, between Sleaford and 
Tattershall. 
In Ilolderness, Yorkshire, peaty beds occupy small lacustrine areas 
which were formerly meres. 
These preliminary observations would not be complete with- 
out some reference to the far-reaching effects of the drainage of 
peat-covered areas : — 
Whatever may he the results of under-draining cultivated land, there is 
no doubt of the effect of trenching the upland pastures, moors, and peat- 
bogs, amongst which most of the northern rivers take their rise. Peat acts 
like a sponge in absorbing the rainfall ; the surface of some bogs often rises 
very considerably when distended by water, and at times, when overstrained, 
the surface hursts and considerable damage ensues. But this is only the 
case with what are termed “ flows ” or shaking bogs, which generally occur 
at low levels ; and it rarely happens with the peat bogs of hill districts. 
These high peat bogs are reservoirs of water, which they collect in winter 
and yield gradually in summer. They generally lie at too high a level to 
he cultivated for grass or corn, but they are capable of some improvement 
as rough upland pasture. This, improvement is often secured by deeply 
trenching the bogs in various directions ; the water then drains off, the soil 
becomes drier and affords feed for sheep. This process is largely going on, 
and, if continued, will, in the course of only a few years, make its results 
seriously felt on the summer and autumn flow of the rivers in the north- 
east of England. Such results will be less felt, indeed may he compara- 
tively unimportant, in most rivers on the western side of the great central 
watershed of England ; for there the rainfall is much greater, and the periods 
of drought are shorter. But on the eastern side of the watershed it is simply 
equivalent to destroying a large number of “compensation reservoirs,” which 
at present serve to diminish the winter floods and to augment the summer 
flow. The additional value conferred on the uninhabited upland moors is 
but small ; the loss to the populous cultivated lowlands is immense . 2 
In July 1892 a circular was sent from the Foreign Office, 
by the Marquis of Salisbury, to Her Majesty’s representatives at 
The Hague, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, 
and Paris, requesting such information as might be procurable 
1 R. N. Worth, Transactions of the Devon Association. VII., 229. 
2 Water Supply and Public Health. By W. Topley. Pop. Sci. Rev., vol. 
xv. Jan. 1876, p. 33. See also remarks by the same author in Proc. Inst. Civ. 
Eny., vol. xlv. 1876, p. 89. 
