The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

Bogs and mosses are little more than lakes filled up with vegetable matter, usually of aquatic origin. They are to be found not only in Ireland and Scotland, but also in every northern country, more especially when thinly peopled. It should be remarked, that Ireland abounds in springs, which are mostly dry in summer; and that grass and weeds grow abundantly about these spots. In the winter these springs swell and run, softening and loosening all the earth about them. Now, that sward or surface of the earth which consists of the roots of grass, being lifted up, and made fuzzy or spongy by the water in the winter, is dried in the spring, and does not fall together, but withers in a tuft. The new grass which springs through it is again lifted during the following winter; and thus the spring is still more and more stopped, and the sward grows thicker and thicker, till at length it makes what is called a quaking bog. In proportion as it rises and becomes drier, and as the grass roots and other vegetables become more putrid, together with the mud and slime of the water, it acquires a blackness, and becomes what is called a turf bog. When the vegetables rot, it is considered that the saline particles are in general carried away by the water, in which they are dissolved; but that the oily or sulphureous particles remain and float on the water; and it is thus that the turf acquires its inflammability. The highest mountains of Ireland are, as well as the plains, covered with bogs, because they abound in springs, which, on account of a defective population, are not cleared; and thus they are overrun with bogs. In that country mosses also abound; and the particular kind which grows in bogs, is remarkable on this account, that a congeries of its threads, before it is decayed, constitutes the substance of the light spongy turf, which thus becomes so tough as not to yield to the spade. This curious substance, in the north of Ireland, is called old wives’ tow, and is not unlike flax. The turf hardens by degrees, but is still stringy when broken, and at length becomes the red turf employed as fuel.

The production of the quaking bogs is as follows. When a stream or spring runs through a flat, it becomes filled with weeds in summer, and trees fall across and dam it up. During the winter season the water stagnates more and more every year, until the whole flat is covered. A coarse kind of grass, peculiar to these bogs, springs up in tufts, the roots of which are consolidated, and which, in a few years, grow to the hight of several feet. In the winter the grass rots, and falls with its seed on the tufts, thus adding to their growth the ensuing spring. The tops of flags and grass are sometimes interwoven on the surface of the water, and gradually becoming thicker, cover its surface. On this covering herbs grow; and by the interweaving of their roots, it is rendered so strong as to bear a man. Some of these bogs sink, where a man stands, to a considerable depth, and rise before and behind: underneath, the water is clear. Even these in time become red bogs; but may easily be converted into meadow land, by clearing a trench for the passage of the water.

Sir Hans Sloane, in his account of the bogs of Ireland, published in the “Philosophical Transactions,” notices a curious fact, namely, that when the turf-diggers, after having dug out the earth proper to make turf or peat, reached the bottom, so as to come to the clayey or other soil, by draining off the water, they met with the roots of fir-trees, with their stumps standing upright, and their branches spread out on every side horizontally. This was evidently the place of the growth of these trees, the branches of the roots of which are in some parts matted, as is seen in the roots of trees closely planted. Large pieces of wood have been found, not only in clay-pits, but likewise in quarries or stone-pits, in the blocks of stone raised out of their strata or layers. The black spongy mold employed for peat smells strongly of bitumen, or petroleum, a great proportion of the oil of which is yielded by distillation; so that, singular as it may appear, not only oil, but a material which may be used for candles, may be extracted from these peat-bogs in large quantities; and it has even been proposed that this business should be carried on on a large scale, with a view to giving prosperity to the country. In several parts of Ireland a singular phenomenon has been observed: on horses trampling with their feet on a space of soft ground, a sudden appearance of light ensued. On the mold, which agreed in color, lightness, &c., with peat earth, being examined with a microscope, the light was found to proceed from an abundance of small, semi-transparent, whitish, live worms which lay in it.

The commissioners appointed by parliament to inquire into the nature and extent of the bogs of Ireland, and the practicability of draining them, represent them as occupying thousands of acres, indeed, many square miles. Their nature and constituent parts are described by them as consisting of an accumulation of vegetable matter, settling in successive generations on itself, and converted by the want of ventilation and motion to a stagnant pool, which first furnished the elements of life and increase to the plants covering its surface. The progress of the accumulation may be best conceived by imagining a basin, or concave reservoir, of a certain extent and depth, formed of clay, limestone, gravel, &c., through which the water, scantily but constantly supplied, can not obtain an issue. Undisturbed in this water, a surface of bog moss grows, decays and putrefies. To this a second generation succeeds; and this is followed by others, until, at length, the bulk rises considerably above the level of its bed, forming hillocks of various hights, shapes and dimensions. The surface of a bog is not level like a lake, but undulating; and it terminates somewhat abruptly, and almost perpendicularly. The average hight of the great bogs, above the level of high-water mark in Dublin harbor, is about two hundred and fifty feet. Many acres of these bogs have been reclaimed; and the practicability of draining and cultivating the greater proportion of them has been pointed out in the reports of the commissioners.

Perthshire, in North Britain, abounds in mosses, the contents of which are computed to exceed nine thousand acres. The greatest hight of the moss, above the clay on which it lies, is fourteen feet and a half. Its surface, when viewed at a distance, seems wholly covered with heath: but when closely examined, is found to be composed of small tufts of heath, intermixed with a variety of moss-plants. Here also are found innumerable trunks of trees, lying along close to their roots, the latter being still fixed in the clay, as in the natural state.

The irruption of what is called Solway moss has greatly attracted the public attention; for, although the cause of it is obvious, still the alteration it produced on the surface of the earth, was more considerable than any known in Great Britain, as resulting from a natural cause, since the destruction of Earl Goodwin’s estate. It happened in the year 1771, after severe rains which had in many places produced great inundations of the rivers. The following is a concise description of the spot where this event happened. Along the side of the river Esk, is a vale, about a mile in breadth, bounded on the south-east by the river, and on the north-west by a steep bank, about thirty feet in hight above the level of the vale. From the top of the bank the ground rises on an easy ascent for about a quarter of a mile, where it is terminated by the moss, which extends about two miles north and south, and about a mile and a half east and west, being bounded on the north-west by the river Sark. It is probable that the solid ground, from the top of the bank above the vale, was continued in the same direction under the moss, before its irruption, for a considerable space; for the moss, at the place where the irruption happened, was inclined toward the sloping ground. From the edge of the moss there was a gully or hollow, called by the country people the gap, and said to be thirty yards deep where it entered the vale: down this hollow ran a small rill of water, which was often dry in summer, not having any other supply but what filtered from the moss.

The irruption happened, at the head of this gap, on the night of the sixteenth of November, between the hours of ten and eleven, when all the neighboring rivers and brooks were prodigiously swollen by the rains. A large body of the moss was forced, partly by the great fall of rain, and partly by the springs beneath, into a small beck or burn, which runs within a few yards of its border to the south-east. By the united pressure of the water behind it, and of this beck, which was then very high, it was carried down a narrow glen between two banks about three hundred feet high, into a wide and spacious plain, over a part of which it spread with great rapidity. The moss continued for some time to send off considerable quantities of its substance, which, being borne along by the torrent, on the back of the first great body, kept it for many hours in perpetual motion, and drove it still further on. During the first night, at least four hundred acres of fine arable land were covered with moss from three to twelve or fifteen feet in depth. Several houses were destroyed, much corn lost, &c.; but all the inhabitants escaped. When the waters subsided, the moss also ceased to flow; but two pretty considerable streams continued to run from the heart of it, and carried away some pieces of mossy matter to the place where it burst. They then joined the beck, already mentioned, which with this addition, resumed its former channel, and with a little assistance from the people of the neighborhood, made its way to the Esk, through the midst of that body of moss which obstructed its course. Thus, in a great measure drained, the new moss fell several feet, and when the fair weather came on at the end of November, it settled in a firmer and more solid body on the lands it had overrun. By this inundation about eight hundred acres of arable ground were overflowed before the moss stopped, and the habitations of twenty-seven families destroyed.

Tradition has preserved the memory of a similar inundation in another part of North Britain. At Monteith a moss changed its course in one night, and covered a great extent of ground. There is also an account in the “Philosophical Transactions” of a moving moss near Churchtown, in Lancashire, which greatly alarmed the neighborhood, and was regarded as a miracle. The moss was observed to rise to a surprising hight, and soon after to sink as much beneath the level, moving slowly toward the south.

CORAL REEFS AND ISLANDS.

Coral belongs to the class of those surprising productions of nature, which are named zoöphytes, or plant-animals, on account of their filling up the intermediate space between the animal and vegetable kingdoms; and in treating of them this curious substance will be distinctly considered. In the mean time, the production of coral reefs and islands presents one of those geological changes, by which the earth’s surface has been modified, and has received a new accession from the sea.