The natural and agricultural history of peat-moss or turf-bog. To which are annexed corroborative writings, correspondence and observations... / by Andrew Steele.

  • Steele, Andrew.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The natural and agricultural history of peat-moss or turf-bog. To which are annexed corroborative writings, correspondence and observations... / by Andrew Steele. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/426 (page 7)
    sea-salt; and no doubt, many of the vegetables found in mosses have a soluble juice nearly as anti¬ septic as those. Heath in particular, which grows so abundantly on mosses, as to be considered by some their pecu¬ liar production, has been found to contain a great proportion of the tanning principle. In the Trans¬ actions of the Dublin Society (vol. i. 1800), there is a statement of Thomas Rankine of Ballaghey, in the county of Londonderry, Esq., having pro¬ duced to that Society cow-hides tanned with heath alone ; the juices of which he declared were extract¬ ed by fire (most probably by infusion in warm wa¬ ter), and it is said, that the leather so prepared was found to be durable, firm and solid. Also there is in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Berlin, an account of more than sixty moss and aquatic plants, fit for tanning. Among these the tormen- tilla is perhaps the strongest tan, and is used as such in the Highlands of Scotland. Among the Li¬ chens, Kirwan says, that the Lichen arboreus is employed for the common purposes of tanning in Germany. But tanin is unfriendly, even destruc- * tive, to the growth of land vegetables. The pow¬ der of oak-bark destroys green pasture.