quaking bog

plural quaking bogs

1. A type of floating bog in which vegetation forms a floating mat on the surface of water or above very wet peat, which moves (or quakes) when walked upon.

   The turf hardens by degrees , but is still stringy when broken, and at length becomes the red turf employed as fuel. The production of the quaking bogs is as follows : […]

   1821, Sir Richard Phillips, The Hundred Wonders of the World: And of the Three Kingdoms of Nature, Described According to the Latest and Best Authorities, page 235

   1 more example

   […] the naturalists attribute this mysterious movement to the isostatic dynamics of the quaking bog itself: their very footfall has created a rippling dynamic through the liquidity of the peat, which disturbed the distant vegetation. Yet even for these scientists, as Meredith (2002: 319) notes, this sense of an animate[…]

   2020 December 15, Melanie Giles, Bog bodies: Face to face with the past, Manchester University Press, →ISBN