388 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ORGANIC NITROGENOUS COMPOUNDS IN PEAT SOILS. II. 



INTRODUCTION. 



To the Michigan farmers the pe<it and muck beds of the state have 

 for a long time prasented great possibilities as cheap and convenient 

 sui>plies of nitrogen for fertilizing purposes. Being in many cases 

 worthless for cultivation and containing considerable quantities of 

 plant food, it would, at first sight, seem reasonable to suppose that 

 they would form an ideal source of supply for this material. These 

 beds are of such widespread occurrence that the majority of farms 

 in this part of the country contain more or less extensive areas of 

 them, while in almost all portions of the state large tracts of swamp 

 land are found which are practically worthless for other purposes. 



The amount of nitrogen usually varies from one and one-half to 

 three per cent, of the air-dried material, or from about two to five- 

 tenths per cent, of the material as it comes from the bog. When one 

 considers that this is equivalent to from three to six tons of free 

 nitrogen, eighteen to thirty-six tons of nitrate of soda or fourteen to 

 twenty-eight tons of sulfate of ammonia per acre-foot, it becomes evi- 

 dent that such a natural product, could it be utilized, would be of 

 no small value to the agriculturists of the state. 



However, the mere fact that a substance contains nitrogen is no 

 certain indication that it will be valuable as a fertilizer. Thus the 

 atmosphere itself contains millions of tons of free nitrogen but this 

 is useless as food to all but a very few plants, while scrap leather and 

 a large variety of other products contain considerable quantities of 

 nitrogen united with other elements in such a way as to be of equall}' 

 small value for fertilizer. Saltpetre and sulfate of ammonia, on the 

 other hand, have their nitrogen so combined that it can be readily 

 utilized as plant food. Unfortunately the nitrogen in peat is in the 

 former condition, and plants find difficulty in assimilating it when it 

 is applied to the soil in the raw state and, as a result, what at first 

 sight appears to be very valuable to the farmer has in reality proved 

 to be of small value. 



But it is possible, that by studying the various combinations in which 

 nitrogen- occurs in peat, some method of treatment may be devised by 

 which it can be converted into forms more available for plant use. 

 It is in the hope of throwing some light upon the character of these 

 nitrogenous compounds and perhaps in this way rendering possible the 

 discovery of some method for making them useful for fertilizing pur- 

 poses that the present series of investigations has been undertaken. 

 That the study of the decom])Osition products of peat offers one of 

 the best ways of attacking the problem can scarcely be questioned, 

 for it is really from these bodies that we must expect results when the 



