Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1897-02-20
IRELAND'S GREAT BOGS.
Why They Move and Destroy Huts and
People.

Why They Move and Destroy Huts and
People.
The reports from Ireland to the effeos
that bog is moving down the course Of
the Flesk river, engulfng cottages and
hanlets, threatening the town Of Rath-
more, the ruins of Holy Cross abbey and
many other interesting remains in the
vicinity Of the lakes Of Killarney has
brought to life the old superstition con-
corning the nature Of boys and their
mysterious power Of destruction and
concealment The sea gives up Its dead
more readily. There are no tides In that
solidifying mass whose permeating wa
tiers are blacker- than the Styx.
But bog can no more move from its
eternal moorings than can Lake Michi-
gan. It can overflow indeed, as can the
swamps Of the Kankal,ee, and flood
wide districts The difference would be
that in the swamp the sodden yegeta.
ton would remain anchored, while in
the bog the spongy surface peat be-
comes loosened and goes down with the
food that moves silently and unseen be-
meath. What wonder, then, If the SIM
pie peasantry, watching the insid1ous
advance of apparently solid peat, should
revive the legend of the days when
fairies put their shoulders under the bog
and moved it to distant place. III re-
atty the turf wool has no density, but
is compacted by pressure from behind,
and it is drained dry because of its por-
GUS, nonputrescent substance.
When the flood subsidies, the bog will
be found in its ancient anchorage. a
dry, brown, worthless peat will be scat
tered before doors far distant. Some turf
cutters cottages, timbered with bog oak
and matched with the spagnum, will
have disappeared, and perhaps with
them some hapless families, but the
stone built towns will get an antiseptic
wash and the ruins sustain no more
damage than purifying inundation,
such as they have encountered many
times since saints laid the foundations
in the isle of sanctity and learning.
There will not even be slime upon the
holy walls.
Swamps are primitive masses Of earth
or deposits Of alluvia along river
courses, water soaked and choked with
decaying vegetation that gives off MAS
matte gas But boys are ancient lakes,
often fed by springs underneath, and
feeding in their turn swift rivers. The
water is never stagnant. The turf is an
accumulation Of vegetable matter on
the surface, but often 20 to 40 feet in
depth. This vegetation has undergone a
peculiar change under a degree Of tenn
perature that prevents decomposition.
AS might be well understood, ordinary
aquatic plants of much succulent leaf
age would decay.
The plant peculiar to the bog is
kind of moss known as spagnum, some
thing between the woody fiber Of Span
ish moss and the porous compactness Of
sponge Given shallow pool, mud con-
tracing around the roots Of true water
plants and spagnum f1ourishes, para
site absorbing the other plants, sending
out new ones of its own, spreading
above and solidifying below and grad
ually replacing the water with con-
nected fiber.
On top, each years growth is dry,
brown and crumbling, but eight feet
below it is often as hard, black and
valuable for fuel as coal. Underneath
this strata is water to an unknown
depth, and there is water oozing to the
surface up through the porous mass,
seemingly unsafe, but in reality treach-
erous only i'll the bog holes left by the
peat cutter, where nature has not had
time to heal the wound with q new
growth of spagnum.
The water flows away in great rivers
from all sides, for the bogs are all ex-
tensivo and more elevated than the ara
BILE lands. If the outlets become OBJ
structed, there is an overflow, causing
foods, when the matted brown spag-
mum moves on the surface, as the trades
moved the Saragossa sea with Its islands
of seaweeds. Only this surface moss
can float as each successive year depos-
Its its strata and constantly increases in
density with pressure from above and
below Anything falling into bog hole
becomes imbedded and mummified.
Very much Of the surface must at one
time have been covered with forest
trees, as trunks Of numerous varieties
are often dug up, so perfect as to be
useful for the builder, but black as ebo-
ny and much harder than the original
wood Chicago Times-Herald.