156 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCKLAND . 
[CH. VI. 
from Exeter to Carlisle, and you will scarce pass over a 
mile of uncultivated ground. Marsh lands are, for the most 
part, exceedingly unhealthy, from the putrid vapours that 
are exhaled from their animal and vegetable contents; 
the fens of Lincolnshire and Essex and Romney Marsh 
afforded, before their drainage, too convincing a proof. 
Where stagnant water that has not been impregnated with 
moss prevails, nothing is more common than intermittent 
fevers and malignant epidemics. The soil of the English 
marshes is a black spongy moor of rotten vegetable 
matter. The bogs of Ireland consist of inert vegetable 
matter, covered more or less with unproductive vege¬ 
tation and containing a large quantity of stagnant water. 
The difference between these soils is, that the rotten vege¬ 
table matter of the one produces unrivalled crops of corn 
and grass, whilst the inert vegetable matter of the other 
throws out no kind of plant useful to man. 
“ In Ireland wood is scarcely ever used for fuel, and the 
great supply for the poor is from the extensive bogs, which, 
near great towns, become on this account a valuable pro¬ 
perty. A bog near Limerick sold for £80 an acre. Much 
turf is consumed in Dublin and Limerick. . . . The tolls of 
the Dublin turf boats alone produce an income of ;£ 10,000 
per annum. The season for cutting, drying, and carrying 
home turf is considered in Ireland, and many parts of 
Scotland, to be of as much importance as the harvesting 
of corn. An idle alarm has often been excited by the 
plans of draining and reclaiming bogs, as if the stock of 
fuel would be thus destroyed. But, after a bog has been 
drained and covered with a thin stratum of earth, the mass 
below, thus becoming the subsoil, will be so compressed 
as to afford a better fuel than before, and in a state that 
requires much less drying. The stock indeed would in 
this case be exhaustible, whereas at present it replenishes 
itself. But there can be no question but that it would 
be a national advantage to convert to the purposes of 
supplying food to man those bleak, barren, and dreary 
wastes which now answer no other purpose than that of 
supplying fuel.” 
