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Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 158, 5 June 1937, Page 16

Sometimes in Lake Windermere there appears a floating island. Waterweeds, with fallen leaves and sunken branches, have made a thick mat with their roots on the bottom of the lake. Some of them decay, giving off tiny hubbies of methane, or marsh gas. When sufficient of the bubbles have accumulated, if they are clinging to the vegetation or bottled up by the soil above them, they exercise a buoyant effect. Then the “island” floats to the surface, looking nice and green and solid. At times it is hard enough to he walked on. Travellers along the banks of great rivers which have l>eeu in flood have seen similar “islands” floating downstream. In such cases, however, _ there is usually a mass of fallen timber binding the soil and helping to keep it afloat. It has bgen suggested that not only Britain, hut all the great continents, are really floating islands. If the notion is correct, all the oceans arc hut lakes on the great floating islands!