The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-01-25

while in the bog the spongy surface
peat becomes lossened and goes down
with the flood that moves silently and
unseen beneath. What wonder, then,
if the simple peasantry, watching the
insidiOus advance Of the apparently
solid peat, should revive the legend Of
the days when fairies put their shout
der under the bog and moved it to a
distant place. In reality the turf
wool has no density, but is compacted
by pressure from behi nd, and it Is
drained dry because Of it's porous, non
putrescent substance.
When the flood subsidies the bog will
be found in its ancient anchorage. A
dry, brown, worthless peat will be
scattered, before doors far distant;
some turf cutters cottages timbered
with bog oak and matched with the
sphaynum, 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 a purifying in
undation, such as they have encoun-
tered many times since saints laid the
foundation in the isle Of sanctity and
learning. There will not even be slime
upon the hoiy walls.
Swamps are primitive masses of
earth or deposits of alluvia along river
courses, water-soaked and clloked with
decaying vegetation, that gives off
nliasmatic 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 mat
ter on the surface, but often 20 or 40
oct tot
dergCne a peculiar change under de-
gree Of temperature that prevents de-
composition. AS might be we'll under
stood, ordinary aquatic plants Of much
succulent LEAKAGE would decay. The
plant peculiar to the bog IS a kind of
moss known as sphagnum, something
between the woody fiber Of Spanish
moss and the porous connpactneSs Of
sponge. Given a shallow pool, mud
contracting around the roots of true
water plants and sphagnum fourishes;
parasite absorbing the other plants,
sending out new ones of It's own,
spreading above and solidifying below,
and gradually replacing the water with
cOmpacted 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.
OHuSIIed IulS SIIdbd 10 water 10 al uH-
known Depth and there is water oczing up to
the surface through the porous mass seem
ingly unsafe, but in reality treacherous only
in the bog holes left by the peat-cutter, where
nature has not had time to heal the wound
with new growth of spagnum
The water flows away in great rivers from
all sides, for the boys are all extensive and
more elevated than the arabic lands. If the
outlets become DISTRACTED there is an overflow.
causing floods when the matted brown spag-
mum moves on the surface, as the trades move
the Sargossa sea with it's islands of seaweeds.
Only this surface moss can float as each sue
cessive year deposits It's strata and constantly
increases in density with the pressure from
above and below. Anything falling into a
bog hole becomes imbedded and mummi1ed
Much of the surface must at one time have
been covered with forest trees, as trunks of
numerous varieties are often dug up so per-