NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS.
737
marsh, abounding in vegetable matter. In the immense districts of Europe and America,
such situations are common; and we have impassable mr sses and swamps of vast extent,
but these are not filled with peat, nor is the mud which fills them very inflammable.
Accustomed to the bogs of Scotland, and little informed in natural history, I was much
surprised at not finding similar situations in the Canadian woods without peat; and this
made me examine with attention the matter contained in those bogs. Even where the ve
getable remains were very abundant, and constituted almost the whole mass, I found it
very little inflammable, and altogether unfit for a fuel. And what I took particular no
tice of, the smell in burning was altogether unlike the smell of burning peat. This is
quite peculiar to peat. I never faw peat in any part of North America, except in the
neighbourhood of Louisburg,—and there it was but a very ſcanty mixture of peat-earth
with the mooriſh ſoil.
While the ſmell of all burning peat has a character by which it may always be known,
there are considerable varieties; and these varieties seem to me to be super-additions to
the distinctive smell of peat. This is considerably like that of the most inflammable
lean coal, and still more like to that of jet, but not near so offensive. The blackest, hard
est, heaviest peat, when the matter is almost an impalpable pulp, is the most inflammable,
and leaves the smallest quantity of ashes. This kind of peat has the heaviest sickening
ſmell. Such is the peat at Canisbay, in the north extremity of Scotland, just by John
a-Groat's House. This, when dried, is so fine in its texture as to break with a sort of
poliſh, like a jasper. Its ſmell in burning is not very distinguishable from that of cannel
coal. The smell of the best Dutch turf, which is taken up from the bottom of salt
water, reſembles that of the peat now mentioned very much.
I am inclined to think that a certain juice is necessary for the formation of a bog into
peat. Perhaps this juice is the primitive bitumen. I suspect also that it is always accom
panied by vitriolic matter. Peat afhes always contain a very great proportion of iron.
I'have seen three places in Russia where there is superficial peat moss, and in all of
them the vitriol is so abundant as to effloresce. One in particular, hard by St. Peters
burgh, ſhews it every morning on the clods, when the dew has dried off.
Peat mosses form very regular strata, lying indeed on the surface; but if any operation
of nature ſhould cover this with a déep load of other matter, it would be compressed,
and rendered very solid; and remaining for ages in that situation, might ripen into a
substance very like pit-coal.
LNote 16. p. 407.J
Perhaps the fact would be more properly expreffed by saying that when the efferves
cence produces hydrogenous gas, the French chemists, combining their theory of com
bustion with Mr. Cavendish’s discovery of the composition of water, infer that the metal
acted only on the water, and attracting its oxygen, sets the hydrogen at liberty. When
VoL, II.
5A