30 
HARTLAND NATURE CLUB 
SNAIL SWAMP 1911. Byron P. Buggies 
(Original Paper.) 
Snail Swamp is at the southeast corner of my farm. There 
are about two acres of it on my land; an acre or more of it on 
the farm south of mine, and! on that land there is a small stream 
running into the swamp part of the year. There are about 
two acres of the swamp on land east of mine, and the outlet 
is at that part of the swamp, from whence runs a small stream 
to Lulls Brook at the English Dam. 
When the last Glacial Period was past, the coldest or middle 
part of which was thirty-one thousand years ago, and the water 
had settled away, making valleys for the rivers and streams and 
small brooks, there were left many small and some large ponds 
in depressions or low places that did not get drained because 
of the underlying rock or hard-pan of clay filled with stones, 
and Snail Swamp was one of these ponds underlain with hard- 
pan. 
At first the water was filled with soil, pulverized rocks and 
stones and a sediment of blue clay settled at the bottom of the 
pond six or eight inches deep. Time went on and on; the water 
being limy from the limestone rocks so abundant, a carbonate 
of lime sediment, called marl, settled in the pond and in time 
nearly filled it. 
Animal and vegetable life appeared. The water snail thrived 
where he found plenty of lime to make his shells of. Trees and 
shrubbery grew, and 1 leaves fell in the pond and muck began to 
accumulate on top of the marl at a rate of probably an inch in 
depth in a hundred years. As time went on various water 
plants, mosses, sedges, grasses, shrubs and even trees, grew in 
shallow water, and as they eventually went to decay, muck was 
made faster than when it was all made of leaves. Finally the 
pond was filled and closed over with grasses, sedges, shrubs and 
trees as we find it today. 
By running down a slim pole I found the muck a foot or 
two deep at or near the edge, but two rods from the edge the 
longest pole does not strike the bottom. Where I had removed 
four feet of muck a fourteen foot pole struck no bottom. 
The old Windsor and Woodstock Turnpike crosses this 
swamp on my land close to my eastern line. The road was built 
about the year 1800. It was in use only twenty years when it 
