BOAT. [LIFE-BOAT ; SIMP-BUILDING.] BOBBIN NET. [LACE.] BOG. The name of bog has been given indiscriminately to very different kinds of sub stances. In all eases the expression signifies an earthy substance wanting in firmness or consistency. In some cases, where springs of water, or the drainage from an extensive area are pent up near the surface of the soil, they simply render it soft or boggy, and in this state the land is perhaps more properly called a quagmire. A second state of bog is where in addition to the condition just described, a formation of vegetable matter is induced, which, dying, and being reproduced on the surface, assumes the state of a spongy mass of sufficient consistence to bear a considerable weight. Bogs of this description are nume rous and extensive in Ireland, where they are valuable, from the use made of the solid vege table matter both as fuel and as a principal ingredient in composts for manures. Where the turf has been cut away for these purposes, several bogs have been reclaimed by draining; and the subsoil is then readily brought into cultivation. Bogs also occur in Cornwall, and other parts of Great Britain, wliere the form of the surface and the nature of the earth favour the general condition under which bog is formed. The bogs of Ireland are estimated
in the whole to exceed in extent 2,800,000 English acres.
When bogs become consolidated or com pressed, they are called peat-mosses. An extensive tract of peat-moss (Chatmoss) in the county of Lancaster has attracted public attention from the circumstance of the Liver pool and Manchester Railway having been carried through it. Chatmoss (0 miles long by 3 broad) has a depth of 30 feet of spongy moss, which Mr. Stephenson succeeded in making fit to bear a railway, by filling it with an enormous mass of solid earth. The late Mr. Roscoe brought part of Chatmoss into a state fit for cultivation by marling and manu ring.
Many of the Irish bogs contain wood of a peculiar kind, called bog-oak, bog-yew, &C. ; of which statuettes, models, and ornaments are carved ; beautiful specimens of this kind were displayed at the Dublin' Exhibition of Manufactures in 1850.
The present attempts to give commercial valise to the peat of Dartmoor are noticed elsewhere. [PEAT.]