Faddan More Psalter used as a liner to stiffen the cover somewhat. Low oxygen levels in the bog provide unusual preservation conditions, and bogs were often used by Irish monks as hiding places for valuables in the face of Viking raids. In addition to low oxygen levels, sphagnum moss, of which the peat bog is composed, produces an antibiotic substance called sphagnan that binds with proteins on the surface of microorganisms, immobilising them. Its highly reactive carbonyl groups can alter chemicals and nutrients that would otherwise decompose organic matter. And above all the sphagnum moss causes organic material to undergo chemical changes itself
Tom Edwards-Moss Tom Edwards-Moss Tom Cottingham Edwards-Moss, (7 April 1855 – 16 December 1893), was a British amateur oarsman who rowed in the Boat Race four times and twice won the Diamond Challenge Sculls, and a Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1892. Edwards-Moss was the second son of Sir Thomas Edwards-Moss, Baronet of Otterspool, Aigburth, near Liverpool and Amy Charlotte Edwards. His grandfather was John Moss, founder of what later became the North-Western Bank, and his father had assumed the surname Edwards-Moss on marriage. Edwards-Moss was educated at Eton College and Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating