The number of mosses and moors in the neighbourhood of Manchester makes it interesting--as in the case of the Cheshire meres, to know something of their origin. The wonderful discoveries of geology, with regard to the crust of the earth, and the successive deposition of the strata of which it is composed, claim our attention scarcely more than the history of the surface, which has undergone changes quite as momentous to the welfare of man, and no part of that history is more curious, perhaps, than that of the mosses. Wherever a moss now extends in wet and dreary waste, it would seem that there was once a plain or expanse of tolerably dry land, more or less plentifully covered with trees and underwood, but subject, by reason of the depressed level, to frequent inundation, just as we see the fields at Sale and Stretford flooded every now and then at the present day. The falling of the older and weaker trees, in consequence of the long-continued wetness, and the want of a steady and complete outlet for the accumulated waters, would soon cause the place to assume the character of a marsh,--neither land nor lake,--and now semi-amphibious plants would not be slow to spring up, for wherever such conditions of surface are exchanged for dry ones, plants of that nature appear as if by magic. The morass thus formed and occupied, would in a single season become knee-deep in the very same kind of mixture as that which now forms the outer skin of Carrington Moss, viz., heather of different kinds, cotton-sedges, and bog-moss. Every successive year the original mass of roots and stems would be left deeper and deeper beneath by the new and upward growth of the vegetation above; till at last, saturated with wet, and pressed by the weight of the superincumbent matter, it would acquire the compact form which is now called "peat." The original moisture of the place, instead of diminishing, would be incessantly reinforced from the clouds, and the lapse of a few centuries would pile up on the surface of the once dry ground, a heap many yards in vertical thickness of half-decayed, half-living heath and moss, with sundews, cotton-sedges, and asphodels on the top. The branches of the trees drowned and entombed at the beginning, would remain where they fell, slowly decaying, but retaining their character well enough to be recognised, and hence wherever a moss is now drained, and portions of the original deposit are dug out, there are generally found mixed with it branches and fragments that in a measure may be likened to fossils. Carrington Moss, in parts where drained, is strewed with such bits of the silver birch, declared by the shining whiteness of the bark. The trees that these bits belonged to no doubt grew tall and leafy on the spot that is now their sepulchre and memorial. Flowers and seeds of bog plants are also found low down in the moss, almost as fresh as if newly fallen. In the middle, these vast vegetable tumuli are often twenty or thirty feet deep.