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fications coming from their fides. No. 4 had one plant, which camenearer to the laft than any of the reft ; it had three leaves, not 60broad nor fo long as the laft, but as well expanded ; one root, long-er and thicker than the last, went to the bottom of the pot, with-out ramifications from the fides; it refembled the roots of graingrowing in a poor fandy foil.
No certain conclusion can be drawn from this little experi-ment. It is in vain to attempt to account for the ill successof the plants in the pots No. 1.&2.: There being a suspi-cion of the seed being defective, it is hard to say, whether thesoil or the seed was in the fault. From the appearance of theplant in the pot No. 4 it should seem, that peat-moss, while itsingredients still remain undecomposed, is not, of itself, hostileto the vegetation of land plants; since, when disengaged of theexcess of water, and its parts forced nearer together, by com-pression in the flower-pot, a plant made regular, though slowprogress in it, for more than seven weeks. But at the same time,this substance yields very little nourishment to such plants, sincethe advance of this plant was very slow, and its roots showedthe symptoms of growing in the most sterile soil. The morevigorous growth of the plant, growing in the pot No. 3, indi-cates that the same substance, when mixed with more solid andheavy bodies, yields nourishment to land plants.
Though the foregoing examination of peat moss does not giveground for many certain conclusions, yet it may justify the fol-lowing.
1st, This substance does not lose the organization of its ingre-dients, by the quick putrefaction which other vegetables, thegrowth of short periods, undergo ; but rots, or is decomposed ina slow manner, analogous to the decay of perfect wood. Andit is evident, that pure peat-mosses are always in an undecayedstate, near the surface, as they annually acquire a new stratum,unless some incident have formerly put a stop to their progress.
2d, This resistance of putrefaction, which disqualifies the up-per strata of peat-moss for yielding nourishment to land plants,cannot be attributed to any acid, or other substance, containedin the moss, but to the original construction of the plants ofwhich it is formed, and their great elasticity, by which they arekept at a distance from one another, leaving large interstices, toreceive water, which stagnates there.
3d, It appears, by what is above stated, that undecayed moss,is specifically lighter than water; that, as it is more decayed, itdiminishes in bulk, and gains in specific weight, till it is altoge-ther disorganized, and becomes a solid mass, and then its speci-fic weight is rather more than that of water : consequently, as itdecays, part dissolves in, and is carried off by water, leavingdie earth behind, by which the specific gravity of the residue isincreased. Hence, peat-moss is, at least in part, in its progress