PEAT MACHINES. 327 



and with men in the more humble walks of life, to invent a 

 process for compressing and drying peat — one which would 

 improve the quality, shorten the time, and lessen the expense of 

 its manufacture by the tedious process of manual toil ; but gen- 

 erally with slight success. At first glance it would seem not to 

 be a very difficult task to accomplish the separation of the 

 superabundant moisture from the peat, as it is found in the bed ; 

 but repeated and costly experiments have demonstrated, that in 

 the manipulation of peat, whenever strong pressure was applied 

 to the material in its original state, particles of the peat itself 

 would follow the course of the water through all the apertures 

 provided for the escape of that element, clogging the machine 

 and rendering it useless for rapid and effective work. Three of 

 the best of these compressing machines were patented respec- 

 tively by Mr. Slight, of Edinburg, in 1833 ; by Sir Niel Men- 

 zies in the same year, and by Lord Willoughby D'Eresby in 

 1836. All of them gave abundant promise of success at the 

 time ; but the author of the Rural Cyclopaedia, published at 

 Edinburg in 1855, declares that " all failed in effecting their 

 object, in consequence of the extreme difficulty of retaining the 

 peat while under great pressure ; for this has always been found 

 to escape through any aperture that would pass water, unless an 

 envelope of coarse flaxen cloth be employed." 



In the German States, where peat is almost the universal 

 fuel, experiments in this direction seem to have been no more 

 successful ; and the invention of Mannhardt, which was applied 

 upon an extensive scale in Bavaria, was found, upon trial, to be 

 quite impracticable. He attempted to get rid of the water by 

 means of strainers of hair cloth, stretched upon huge cylinders 

 fifteen feet in diameter, and revolving in opposite directions ; 

 but although his machine was built at a cost of $8,000, it was 

 very liable to get out of repair, and has ceased to be considered 

 a success. In Hanover, Hungary, France and Switzerland many 

 other laborious and ingenuous efforts in the same department of 

 inventive research proved abortive ; and to this day, upon the 

 continent of Europe, the ancient Celtic method of digging and 

 preparing peat, with some slight modifications, the result of 

 local circumstances, seems to be that in most general use. 



