From the Karitane Harris Hospital, in Dunedin, New Zealand, we learn of the use of sphagnum moss for these absorbent pads. The moss is that which florists use for packing plants and grows very extensively in the swamp regions of the United States, but it needs to be thoroughly dried and cleaned of sticks and stems before being used for this purpose.

Such a pad (i.e., a pad of sphagnum moss inclosed in cheesecloth) weighing only an ounce will completely absorb and retain a quarter of a pint of urine—say as much as would be passed in the night. This is infinitely cleaner and healthier than allowing the urine to spread over a wide area of napkin and nightdress, and thus cause extensive chillding and more or less irritation of the skin. Dry sphagnum forms an extremely light, clean, airy, elastic pad, which will yield in any direction and accommodate its shape to the parts.

Those living in the country where this moss grows may find it a great convenience to pick and dry the moss for this or other domestic purposes.

it was so convenient. When it was time for a diaper change, we would simply remove the moss, and if we were home, we would compost it under a fruit tree. If we were on the trail hiking, we would simply tuck the soiled moss into the topsoil and cover it with leaves or other forest duff. On car trips, we would pull off the highway and bury it. (Once we even discreetly slipped a wad of our nitrogen-enriched sphagnum deep into the mulch under landscape shrubbery outside a shopping mall.)

At Boxley also was a famous image of St. Rumald, Rumbold, or Grumbald, the son of a Northumbrian king and of a daughter of Penda, King of Mercia. He died when three days old, but not before he had repeated the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed in Latin, a feat for which he gained canonisation.

His image at Boxley is said to have been small, and of a weight so light that a child could lift it, but that it could at times become so heavy that it could not be moved by persons of great strength.

Thomas Fuller, the quaint old divine, tells us that "the moving hereof was made the conditions of women's chastity. Such who paid the priest well might easily remove it, whilst others might tug at it to no purpose. For this was the contrivance of the cheat — that it was fastened with a pin of wood by an invisible stander behind. Now, when such offered to take it who had been bountiful to the priest before, they bare it away with ease, which was impossible for their hands to remove who had been close-fisted in their confessions. Thus it moved more laughter than devotion, and many chaste virgins and wives went away with blushing faces, leaving (without cause), the suspicion of their wantonness in the eyes of the beholders; whilst others came off with more credit (because with more coin), though with less chastity."