93 
Dagenham Breach*, that able engineer particularly describes what 
he terms the moor-log. This, he says, was composed of vegetable 
matter heaped together, but seemed chiefly to be composed of brush 
wood, among which there appeared to be a considerable quantity of 
hazel trees ; hazel nuts themselves were also found in this mass, and 
were very fair to look at, but were easily crushed, the kernel having 
entirely perished. In the mass were also contained the trunks of 
several trees, of which, he thinks, the trunks of the yew trees, some 
of which were about fourteen or sixteen inches in diameter, were the 
least decayed. The willow trees, wdiich Avere two feet and upwards 
in diameter, retained a whitish colour, like touchwood, and were 
even softer than the adjoining earth or moor-log. The moor-log ap- 
peared at about three and a half or four feet under the marsh ground, 
and differed in thickness, in different parts. Up the Thames, at 
Deptford, it Avas six feet in thickness. In Woolwich Reach, where 
Captain Bronsden had then been repairing his wharfs, over against 
the ballast wharf, it was between seven and eight feet thick. In 
Plumsted Levels, just against Barking Creek, its thickness was full 
nine feet ; its thickness, as well as its breadth, gradually increasing 
doAvn the river, on both sides. None of it, he says, was to be seen 
where the course of the river cuts into the high-land, as at Woolwich, 
Erith, and Purfleet. Beneath the moor-log was a stratum of blue 
clay, and under this gravel and sand. Stags’ horns were likewise 
found in different places, a little above the A’^ein of moor-log. 
The description of the peat at Newbury, in Berkshire, will serve 
to give a tolerably correct idea of the appearances it generally pre- 
sents in this country ; and will also shew that it does not seem to 
differ, in any thing material, from that, which we have seen, exists 
in the other parts of the AA^orld*. 
* An Account of the Stopping of Dagenham Breach, by Captain John Perry, 1721, p. 72. 
* Philos. Trans, vol. l. part i. p. 109. 
