NOTE XVII … MORASSES.
The production of morasses from fallen woods; account by the Earl Cromartie of a new morass; morasses lose their salts by solution in water; then their iron; their vegetable acid is converted into marine, nitrous, and vitriolic acids; whence gypsum, alum, sulphur; into fluor- acid, whence fluor; into siliceous acid, whence flint, the sand of the sea, and other strata of siliceous sand and marl; some morasses ferment like new hay, and, subliming their phlogistic part, form coal-beds above and clay below, which are also produced by elutriation; shell-fish in some morasses, hence shells sometimes found on coals and over iron- stone.