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MORE ABOUT "MOORLOG"—A PEATY DEPOSIT
FROM THE DOGGER BANK IN THE NORTH SEA.
By H. WHITEHEAD, B.Sc.
With Two Illustrations.
[Read 30th October, 1920.]
ELEVEN years ago I read before the Essex Field Club a
paper on "Moorlog"—a peaty deposit so named by
fishermen, who dredge up considerable quantities of it in the
North Sea, particularly near the Dogger Bank. That paper,
the joint work of Mr. H. H. Goodchild and myself, was published
in the Essex Naturalist, 1909.1 My present aim is to sum-
marise the conclusions arrived at in that paper, and then to
report on further researches.
Careful consideration led to the conclusion that the peat
was dredged from the place in which it was originally deposited,
being part of a land surface which once extended from England
to the Continent, but had become submerged. The late Mr.
Clement Reid and Mrs. Reid, who kindly examined samples of
this peat, reported that the plant remains pointed to the deposit
having been formed in the middle, of a vast fen, with a climate
not much different from our own.
Between 1909 and 1913, about 20 more samples of moorlog
came to hand, dredged between latitudes 54° 30' N. and 55° 50' N.,
and longitudes 2° 40' E. and 5° 18' E, over an area a little larger
than Yorkshire, at an average depth of about 20 fathoms.
The Club had a brief summary of work on some of these
samples in 1912; that summary has not been published. Since
my return from Active Service I have spent much time on the
examination of the remaining samples. I am indebted to Mrs,
Clement Reid for identifying some of the seeds and fruits ; to
Mr. D. J. Scourfield, F.Z.S., for examining and naming remains of
Entomostraca, and to Mr. K. G. Blair, F.E.S., of the British
Museum, for determining beetle remains.
Some 40 species of flowering plants have been isolated, all
of them still found in the British Isles. Bog-bean grew pro-
fusely in great swamps with the moss Hypnum and common
Bog-moss Sphagnum, the latter being the less abundant. The
1 Essex Naturalist, Part 1., vol. xvi., 1909, pp. 51-60.