203 
ticularly the sphagnum palustre, appear to be vegetables which 
are peculiarly calculated to suffer a conversion into this kind of 
substance. 
The promptitude with which the species of plants, which I have 
just enumerated, appear to submit to this change, and their dispo- 
sition extensively to spread themselves through every interstice of 
such peat-bogs as they have possessed themselves of, may perhaps 
account, in a great measure, for that auginentation of peat-mosses, 
which the Doctor evidently considers as highly confirmatory of his 
opinion. The Doctor says, “ It is certain that all mosses have been 
augmented by an increase of real quick moss since their first forma- 
tion. This augmentation can have happened in no other way than 
by its increase in the manner of growing vegetables, from the time 
of its first germination till the present hour. 
To prove that this augmentation is not of growing peat, but of 
vegetable matters under the influence of the common laws of vege- 
tation ; and, at the same time, to point out more clearly what seems 
to me to be the actual circumstance which appeared to corroborate 
the Doctor’s opinion, I must lay before you the account of this 
process, as delivered by an eye-witness. 
Dr. King, in a paper presented to the Dublin Society, says, 
“ that Ireland doth abound in moss more than I believe any kingdom, 
insomuch that it is very troublesome, being apt to spoil fruit-trees 
and quicksets. — ^This moss is of divers kinds : that which grows in 
bogs is remarkable ; your light spongy turf is nothing but a congeries 
of the threads of this moss, before it is sufficiently rotten, (and then 
the turf looks white, and is light). I have seen it in such quantities, 
and so tough, that the turf spades would not cut it : in the north of 
Ireland they, by way of joke, call it old wife’s tow, and curse her 
that buried it, when it hinders them in cutting the turf : it is not 
much imlike flax : the turf holes in time grow up with it again, and 
all the little gutters in bogs are generally filled with it.” 
