FORMATION OF BOGS.

Two natural causes, destructive in character, were, indeed, in operation
in the primitive American forests, though, in the Northern colonies, at
least, there were sufficient compensations; for we do not discover that
any considerable permanent change was produced by them. I refer to the
action of beavers and of fallen trees in producing bogs, [Footnote: The
English nomenclature of this geographical feature does not seem well
settled. We have bog, swamp, marsh, morass, moor, fen, turf-moss,
peat-moss, quagmire, all of which, though sometimes more or less
accurately discriminated, are often used interchangeably, or are perhaps
employed, each exclusively, in a particular district. In Sweden, where,
especially in the Lappish provinces, this terr-aqueous formation is very
extensive and important, the names of its different kinds are more
specific in their application. The general designation of all soils
permanently pervaded with water is Karr. The elder Laestadius divides
the Karr into two genera: Myror (sing. myra), and Mossar (sing. mosse).
"The former," he observes, "are grass-grown, and overflowed with water
through almost the whole summer; the latter are covered with mosses and
always moist, but very seldom overflowed." He enumerates the following
species of Myra, the character of which will perhaps be sufficiently
understood by the Latin terms into which he translates the vernacular
names, for the benefit of strangers not altogether familiar with the
language and the subject: 1. Homyror, paludes graminosae. 2. Dy, paludes
profundae. 3. Flarkmyror, or proper karr, paludes limosae. 4.
Fjalimyror, paludes uliginosae. 5. Tufmyror, paludes caespitosae. 6.
Rismyror, paludes virgatae. 7. Starrangar, prata irrigata, with their
subdivisions, dry starrungar or risangar, wet starrangar and