CHAT MOSS, a bog in Lancashire, the largest in England, about 7,000 acres in extent, and celebrated as having been the scene of the first great and successful efforts for the reclaiming of bogs, by Mr. Roscoe of Liverpool, in the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th c., and of one of the great engineering triumphs of George Stephenson in the construction of the Liverpool and Manchester railway. It is situated between Liverpool and Manchester, at no great elevation above the sea. It is from 20 to 30 ft. in depth, and of such consistence that when an attempt was first made to survey it for the Liverpool and Manchester railway, the attempt was relinquished because of the impossibility of obtaining a sufficiently solid stand for the theodolite. Drains are filled up almost as fast as they are cut, by a pulpy stuff flowing into them, and affect only a few feet on either side. Great danger is experienced by any person unwarily on the surface of the bog: and when he begins to sink, his struggles to extricate himself only cause him to sink faster and deeper. Mr. Roscoe's agricultural improvements were effected by numerous parallel drains in the parts on which he operated. The use of pattens by his workmen, and the adaptation of them to the feet of the horses employed, have been mentioned in the article Boo. The enlargement of the circle upon which a horse's foot rests from 5 in. diameter to 7, nearly doubles it, and consequently dimin ishes nearly by one half the pressure on each unit of surface. Mr. Stephenson, when
he could find no one to countenance him in his views, calculated with confidence on the application of this principle to the railway, so that even the ponderous locomotive and train might be supported by a sufficient extension of the bearing surface; and this be accomplished by spreading branches of trees and hedge-cuttings, and in the softest places rude hurdles interwoven with heather, on the natural surface of the ground, con taining interwined roots of heather and long grass; a thin layer of gravel being spread above all, on which the sleepers, chairs, and rails were laid in the usual manner. Drains were at the same time cut on both sides of the line, and in the central part of the moss a conduit was formed beneath the line of railway, of old tar-barrels placed end to end. Notwithstanding difficulties which every one but himself deemed insuperable, Mr. Stephenson constructed the portion of the line through C. M. at a smaller expense than any other part of the railway. There still is " a sort of springiness in the road over the moss, such as is felt when passing along a suspension-bridge;" and "those who looked along the moss as a train passed over it, said they could observe a waviness, such as precedes and follows a skater upon ice." The complete reclaiming of C. M. for agricultural purposes can be only a question of time and expense. It seems capable of becoming one of the most productive tracts of land in England.