nsactions we
find an example recorded of the bodies of two persons having been buried
in moist peat, in Derbyshire, in 1674, about a yard deep, which were
examined twenty-eight years and nine months afterwards; "the color of
their skin was fair and natural, their flesh soft as that of persons
newly dead."[1014]

Among other analogous facts we may mention, that in digging a pit for a
well near Dulverton, in Somersetshire, many pigs were found in various
postures, still entire. Their shape was well preserved, the skin, which
retained the hair, having assumed a dry, membranous appearance. Their
whole substance was converted into a white, friable, laminated,
inodorous, and tasteless substance; but which, when exposed to heat,
emitted an odor precisely similar to broiled bacon.[1015]

_Cause of the antiseptic property of peat._--We naturally ask whence
peat derives this antiseptic property? It has been attributed by some to
the carbonic and gallic acids which issue from decayed wood, as also to
the presence of charred wood in the lowest strata of many peat-mosses,
for charcoal is a powerful antiseptic, and capable of purifying water
already putrid. Vegetable gums and resins also may operate in the same
way.[1016]

The tannin occasionally present in peat is the produce, says Dr.
MacCulloch, of tormentilla, and some other plants; but the quantity he
thinks too small, and its occurrence too casual, to give rise to effects
of any importance. He hints that the soft parts of animal bodies,
preserved in peat-bogs, may have been converted into adipocire by the
action of water merely; an explanation which appears clearly applicable
to some of the cases above enumerated.[1017]

_Miring of quadrupeds._--The manner, however, in which peat contributes
to preserve, for indefinite periods, the harder parts of terrestrial
animals, is a subject of more immediate interest to the geologist. There
are two ways in which animals become occasionally buried in the peat of
marshy grounds; they either sink down into the semifluid mud, underlying
a turfy surface upon which they have rashly ventured, or, at other
times, as we shall see in the sequel, a bog "bursts," and animals may be
involved in the peaty alluvium.

In the extensive bogs of Newfoundland, cattle are sometimes found buried
with only their heads and necks above ground; and after having remained
for days in this situation, they have been drawn out by ropes and saved.
In Scotland, al