95 
No acorns are found in the peat, though many cones of the fir 
tree are, and also a great number of nut shells. They are all of a 
darkish colour ; and the nuts are hollow within, and some of them 
have a hollow at the broad end. 
A great many horns, heads, and bones of several kinds of deer, 
the horns of the antelope, the heads and tusks of boars, the heads of 
beavers, &c. are also found in it : and I have been told, says the 
learned gentleman who transmitted the account to the Royal Society, 
that some human bones have been found, but I never saw any of 
these myself, though I have of all the others. 
Mr. Aikin, whose journal of his tour through North Wales is replete 
with most interesting and useful remarks, speaking of the valleys 
among the mountains of Llangynnog, Cader-Ferwyn, and Sylattyn, 
in North Wales*, says, the soil is peat, a yard or more in depth, 
Iving upon a thin stratum of rounded pebbles, chiefly quartz, with 
some schistus : the bottom of the bogs is a grey clay, formed, pro- 
bably, from the decomposition of the rock. Near Aberdovey, in 
Merionethshire, he observed a considerable peat-moss, extending 
along the shore to Tomyn, reaching into the sea to an unknown 
extent, from which the inhabitants dig their fuel. 
AVhole bodies of trees, according to the relation of Dr. Gerard 
Boate, are frequently found, in Ireland, by the turf diggers, very 
deep in the ground. And it is worthy of observation, he says, that 
trees and trunks of trees are, in this manner, found, not only in the 
wet bogs, but even in the heathy ones, or red bogs ; as in that by the 
Shannon side, in which bog the turf diggers do many times find whole 
fir trees, deep in the ground : whether it be that those trees being 
fallen, are by degrees sunk deeper and deeper, or that the earth in 
length of time be grown over themf . 
* Page 92. 
t The Natural History of Ireland, by Dr. Gerard Boate, 1652. p. 63. 
