154 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCK LAND. 
[CH. VI. 
advantages of reclaiming them problematical, although 
their inclined position would much facilitate their drainage. 
If a bog be covered with a new and artificial crust, without 
doubt that crust will be productive, or, if the whole sub¬ 
stance of the mass be floated off and carried away, the 
surface that had been buried will naturally be recovered ; 
but the command of water and the necessary materials are 
so essential to the execution of these expedients that to 
apply them on the large scale is almost impossible. It is 
on the edges of large bogs and near the limestone ridges 
and hummocks that daily encroachments are made upon 
the bogs of Ireland ; but the pieces enclosed are so small, 
and distributed among such numbers of peasants, whose 
time is of little value, that the expense, however great, 
becomes imperceptible. The land that had been covered 
by the great moss of Kincardine, near Stirling, was 
regained by the removal of the entire substance of the 
moss by Lord Kaimes. The same thing has been done on 
a less scale in a moss near Londonderry. Bogs are not 
unhealthy. Ireland abounds with lakes and bogs which 
might be supposed to have some influence on the climate 
and animal economy of the inhabitants ; but it does not 
appear that it is anywhere unhealthy. No people are 
more healthy than those who live in the midst of the most 
extensive and wettest mosses ; their atmosphere is entirely 
free from those putrid vapours which are the constant 
attendants of more fertile fens and marshes; even the 
smoke of peat that constantly clouds their cabins is said 
to be beneficial to the health of the inhabitants. The 
symmetry and athletic frame of the Irish, their ardent 
passions and constant flow of animal spirits, which render 
them always cheerful, often turbulent and boisterous, are 
to be attributed to that uninterrupted health and vigorous 
constitution which are derived from the salubrity of the 
climate. 
“ Those bogs with which Ireland is in some places over¬ 
grown are not injurious to health. The watery exhala¬ 
tions from them are neither so abundant nor so noxious 
as those from marshes which become prejudicial from the 
