SCOTTISH AND IRISH BOGS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10057, 31 May 1910, Page 7

SCOTTISH AND IRISH BOGS.

The recent; bogslide in County Roscommon recalls the fact that Ireland has still close on 2 830,000 acres of bog-land, varying in depth from nineteen feet to a few inches. Scotland, of course, is also "rich" in bogs. Rannoch Moor, for instance, is nearly twenty miles square. Mess Flanders, in Perthshire, stil! contains over 10,000 acres of peat, and it is reported that the deep Black Moss contains 800,000 cuoic yards of peat. The reason why so few calamitous bog-slides take p'ace in Scotland compared with Ireland is due to the varying constituents of the bog 3, tneir situation, and the higher cultivation of neighbouring lands. After a long spell of rain—ths usual forerunner of an Irish bog-slide—great quantities of water accumulate at the bottom of the bog. The mosEes and dense plant life on the surfac, or close to tbe surface, prevent evaporation, and the pressure of the steadily accumulating water, either raises the superincumbent mass and makes it overflow its natural boundaries, or bursts a subterranean j.iacsage. Where, however, ih« fringes of the bogs have been reclaim?'*, as in the case of most of the Scottish beg-', and the land in the neighbourhood drained and more or less cultivated, artificial escapes are created whicb drain off the floods. Hence the main reason for the paucity of bog-slides in Scotland compared with Ireland, where the bog lands are still in a "state of nature."