PICKLED IN BOG

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 10, 13 January 1933, Page 9

PICKLED IN BOG

NATURE'S PRESERVATIVES

Isn't it odd, asks the "Literary; Digest," that man's (or ' rather, woman's) trick of "pickling things in! vinegar should have been invented by. the bacteria of bogs' untold geological ages ago! Dr. Fiank Thone, in his Science Ser- ' yiee feature, "Isn't; It Odd!" (Washington), says that anyone who has seen: one of the bogs that can be found from the Gr.eat Lakes region northward and eastward, and across, the, northern part of Europe and Asia, will remember ho>r well things are preserved in the peaty; soil, under the. brown- water. Where drainage ditches are being dng, or peat cut for- fuel, you" can find'tree stumps, branches, and leaves many feet underground, yet in nearly the .same shape and texture they had when they w.er« . buried there. They are not hardened. or .petrified; they are just pickled; H» ' goes on:— '■ •"'. "■ .'.V. ■-. • ::..->■■ "In Europe it' is not:uncommon to '■ find articles of wood, leather, and other perishable materials. Jfcraried in ancient bogs. Their patterns and "workmanship make it possible for some' of these things to be identified as equipment of Roman soldiers, or of people who-held the land at even earlier dates.- One notable find, made in; a Swedish' bog several years ago, -was a circular cloak, well -woven of .wool, that dated from the Bronze Age—at the, Very least 50ft years before the. present .era. ';'/' " •TTow do bogs thus preserve. such? perishable things 1 Exactly as ajar of vinegar does; by discouraging the bacteria and other decay-causing organisms with weak acid. Not the same acid, to I ' be sure; vinegar is a weak solution of' acetic acid, and the acids in bogs are' a complex mixture of other things; Trot; the principle is exactly the same. All' organisms (ourselves included) demand' certain chemical conditions in order to live. If our blood becomes too acid, we first get sick and then die. *Ch6 same is trne of bacteria and other \germs. Their life-processes produce acids, and if these acids are not carried away, when they are excreted from their tiny; bodies, the germs finally die. V "That is what happens in. a bog. There is no outlet for its water. The acids formed by the micro-organisms accumulate, until finally few or none of. them can live in it. Since decay can-1 not take place except' through, .thai agency of bacteria, moulds, yeasts, pro'->- :- tozoa, or other microbes, anything that:, becomes covered with bog water is ; pre- •. served, or at most decays exceedingly; ■:' slowly. Bog water is unfriendly ,-toother microbes- than those p£ decay. Most disease germs cannot stand: it«,'-: acidity. In the old exploring days, sailors putting ashore for water learned that the brown, often.ill-smejling.water ~ from a bog was safer stuff with which, to fill their casks than Water, from, clearer ponds or slow riyetß. They. < never knew why; but they were earlyusers of chemically disinfected water. '*■