AG4 
ents which were deposited as alluvium or inter- 
mixed by mineral impregnation, and is at once 
heavier, more consolidated, and farther removed 
from organic character than more fully decayed 
moss. Such portions of the moss plants as 
are soluble in water during the progress of 
their decay, may be made to contribute nourish- 
ment to useful vegetation; and such portions as 
most powerfully resist putrefaction, may be acce- 
lerated in their decomposition, and forced into a 
condition of fitness for the partial sustenance of 
useful plants, by top dressings and intermixtures 
of earthy substances. When a deposit of allu- 
vium is made on the border of a bog by land- 
streams, or a top dressing is spread on its interior 
surface by the hand of georgic improvement, an 
increase in fertility is soon observable, both too 
rapid in progress and too large in amount, to be 
possibly produced by the mere presence of the 
earthy matters, or ascribable to any cause but 
their decomposing power upon the moss-plants. 
The aggregate extent of bog in Great Britain 
and Ireland is so exceedingly great, and at the 
same time so widely spread, as to render it emi- 
nently worthy of the attention of many farmers, 
most landlords, and all scientific georgists. The 
mountain bogs of Scotland are very abundant in 
most of the highland districts; but, with few ex- 
ceptions, are capable of only slight improvement 
for the purposes of upland pasture. A great ex- 
tent of bog of various character, from moorland 
to flow moss, lies dispersed throughout many 
parts of the Scottish lowlands, particularly in 
Aberdeenshire, Kincardineshire, and the districts 
of Carrick and Galloway. A considerable aggre- 
gate of deep flow bog stretches along the banks 
of the middle part of the river Forth, and was, 
in one part, the scene of the celebrated bog-im- 
proving operations of Blair-Drummond; and a 
very extensive flow bog, in several respects the 
most curious in the three kingdoms, and bearing 
the name of Lochar Moss, occupies the site of a 
great quondam arm of the sea in Dumfries-shire, 
down to the shore of the Solway frith. 
Mountain bogs abound among the uplands of 
Northumberland, the mountains of Wales, the 
great hilly range of the south of England, and 
some of the hilly portions of the English midland 
counties. A vast tract of lacustrine bog expands 
around the region of the Bedford Level, princi- 
pally in the shiges of Cambridge and Lincoln. A 
tract of flow bog, about six miles in length and 
three miles in extreme breadth, is traversed by 
the railway between Liverpool and Manchester, 
and exhibits a vast accumulation of pure mossy 
matter, without the slightest admixture of sand, 
gravel, or any other earth. 
But Ireland, as all fame has long ago pro- 
claimed, far exceeds Great Britain in the propor- 
tion which its bogs maintain to the rest of its 
territorial area. The Irish bogs are exceedingly 
variable in depth, wetness, and consistency; but 
the larger proportion are either quite level or 
BOG. 
very slightly sloped bogs, situated in low plains 
or athwart the far-spread summits of low table- 
lands ; and many of these are completely saturated 
with water, spouty, fennish, and intermixed with 
quagmires ; while most are reddish in colour, 
spongy in consistency, the same in character as 
the flow mosses of Great Britain, and distinc- 
tively designated by the Irish red bogs. Moun- 
tain bogs lie at nearly all altitudes above sea- 
level,—from the skirts of the mere hills to the 
higher acclivities of the loftiest mountains ; and 
they consist, for the most part, of thin sheets or 
strata of peaty matter, dry, firm, and easily re- 
claimed. ‘The Commissioners appointed to in- 
quire into the nature and extent of the bogs of 
Ireland, say, “ A portion of Ireland, of little more 
than one-fourth of its entire superficial extent, 
and included between a line drawn from Wicklow- 
Head to Galway, and another drawn from Howth- 
Head to Sligo, comprises within it about six- 
sevenths of the bogs in the island, exclusive of 
mere mountain bogs, and bogs of less extent than 
500 acres, in its form resembling a broad belt 
drawn across the centre of Ireland, with its nar- 
rowest end nearest to the capital, and gradually 
extending in breadth as it approaches to the 
western ocean. This great division of the island, 
extending from east to west, is traversed by the 
Shannon from north to south, and is thus divided 
into two parts; of these the division to the west- 
ward of the river contains more than double the 
extent of the bogs which are to be found in the 
division to the eastward; so that if we suppose 
the whole of the bogs of Ireland, exclusive of 
mere mountain bog and of bogs under 500 acres, 
to be divided into twenty parts, we shall find 
about seventeen of them comprised within the 
great division we have now described, twelve to 
the westward, and five to the eastward of the 
Shannon, and of the remaining three parts, about 
two are to the south and one to the north of 
this divison. Most of the bogs which 
lie to the eastward of the Shannon, and which 
occupy a considerable portion of the King’s 
county and county of Kildare, are generally 
known by the name of the Bog of Allen ; it must 
not, however, be supposed that this name is ap- 
plied to any one great morass ; on the contrary, 
the bogs to which it is applied are perfectly dis- 
tinct from each other, often separated by high 
ridges of dry country, and inclining towards dif- 
ferent rivers, as their natural directions for 
drainage, and so intersected by dry and cultivated 
land, that it may be affirmed generally there is 
not a spot of these bogs to the eastward of the 
Shannon, so much as two Irish miles distant 
from the upland and cultivated districts.” The 
total extent of the red or wet champaign bogs of 
Ireland, including an estimated amount of the 
multitudinous small ones, is 1,576,000 acres ; and 
the total extent of peat soil, forming the covering 
of mountains, is 1,255,000 acres. 
The depth of the flow bogs of Scotland is com- 
