MOVING-MOSS. We have an account in the Philosophical Transactions of a moving moss near Churchtown in Lancashire, which greatly alarmed the neighbourhood as miraculous. The moss was observed to rise to a surprising height, and soon after sunk as much below the level, and moved slowly towards the south.
A very surprising instance of a moving moss is that of Solway in Scotland, which happened in the year 1771, after severe rains which had produced terrible inundations of the rivers in many places. For the better understanding of this event, we shall give the following description of the spot of ground where it happened. Along the side of the river Esk there is a vale, about a mile broad, less or more in different places. It is bounded on the south-east by the river Esk, and on the north-west by a steep bank 30 feet in height above the level of the vale. From the top of the bank the ground rises in an easy ascent for about a quarter of a mile, where it is terminated by the moss; which extends about two miles north and south, and about a mile and a half east and west, and is bounded on the north-west by the river Sark. It is probable that the solid ground from the top of the bank above the vale was continued in the same direction under the moss, before its eruption, for a considerable space; for the moss at the place where the eruption happened, was inclined towards the sloping ground. From the edge of the moss there was a gully or hollow, called by the country people the gap, and said to be 30 yards deep where it entered the vale; down which ran a small rill of water, which was often dry in summer, having no supply but what filtered from the moss. The eruption happened at the head of this gap, on Saturday November 16. 1771, about ten or eleven at night, when all the neighbouring rivers and brooks were prodigiously swelled by the rains. A large body of the moss was forced, partly by the great fall of rain, and partly by some springs below it, into a small beck or burn, which runs within a few yards of its border to the south-east. By the united pressure of the water behind it, and of this beck, which was then very high, it was carried down a narrow glen between two
banks about 300 feet high, into a wide and spacious plain, over part of which it spread with great rapidity. The moss continued for some time to send off considerable quantities; which, being borne along by the torrent on the back of the first great body, kept it for many hours in perpetual motion, and drove it still farther on. This night at least 400 acres of fine arable land were covered with moss from 3 to 12 or 15 feet deep. Several houses were destroyed, a good deal of corn lost, &c. but all the inhabitants escaped. When the waters subsided, the moss also ceased to flow; but two pretty considerable streams continued to run from the heart of it, and carried off some pieces of mossy matter to the place where it burst. There they joined the beck already mentioned; which, with this addition, resumed its former channel; and, with a little assistance from the people of the neighbourhood, made its way to the Esk, through the midst of that great body of moss which obstructed its course. Thus, in a great measure drained, the new moss fell several feet, when the fair weather came in the end of November, and settled in a firmer and more solid body on the lands it had overrun. By this inundation about 800 acres of arable ground were overflowed before the moss stopped, and the habitations of 27 families destroyed. Tradition has preserved the memory of a similar inundation in Monteith in Scotland. A moss there altered its course in one night, and covered a great extent of ground.
Moss Troopers, a rebellious sort of people in the north of England, who lived by robbery and rapine, not unlike the tories in Ireland, the bucaniers in Jamaica, or banditti of Italy. The counties of Northumberland and Cumberland were formerly charged with a yearly sum, and a command of men, to be appointed by justices of the peace, to apprehend and suppress them.