That the use of turf was well known in the earliest periods in the greater part of Lower Saxony, and throughout the Netherlands, is fully proved by Pliny’s account of the Chauci, who inhabited that part of Germany which at present comprehends the duchies of Bremen and Verden, the counties of Oldenburg, Delmenhorst, Diepholz, Huy and East Friesland. Pliny says expressly, that the Chauci pressed together with their hands a kind of peat earth, which they dried by the wind rather than by the sun, and which they used not only for cooking their victuals, but also for warming their bodies[575]. I explain also by turf a short passage of Antigonus Carystius, quoted from Phanias, in which it is said that a morass in Thessaly having become dry, took fire and burned. The account therefore given in some Dutch chronicles, that turf and the manner of preparing it were first found out about the year 1215, and that about 1222 it had become common, is certainly false[576]. This information may be applicable to certain lands and districts, and correct as to the introduction of this kind of fuel in those parts; for the use of it was not extended far till a late period; and even yet turf is neither employed nor known in many places which possess it, even though they are destitute of wood[577]. Some improvement in the manner of preparing turf may have also been considered as the invention of this fuel, which is undoubtedly of greater antiquity. What induced Monconys to ascribe the invention of turf to Erasmus, or who first propagated that error, I can as little conjecture as Misson[578]. Scaliger has erred[579] no less than Monconys, whose account was doubted by Uffenbach[580]. According to the first-mentioned author, turf had been used in the Netherlands only about three hundred years before his time, and he adds that he did not know that this kind of fuel had ever been mentioned by the ancients. Those however are mistaken also who believe that it is to be found in the Salic laws and those of the Alemanni. It is true that the word _turpha_ occurs in the former, and that Wendelin and others have declared it to mean turf; but the assertion of Eccard, that it signifies a village, called in German _Dorf_[581], is more probable. Still less can the doubtful word _curfodi_, in the laws of the Alemanni, be supposed to allude to this substance, though we are assured by Lindenbrog that he found in a manuscript, in its stead, the term _zurb_[582]. It is also not credible that turf should be employed at that period, as wood was everywhere superabundant.