44 



As early as 1821 we find that German inventors had directed their 

 attention to the problem of compressing peat. It no doubt seemed a sim- 

 ple problem to those first experimenters, as it has to most of the in- 

 vestigators of more recent times, but it was nearly three-quarters of a 



Block of Peat from the surface of a bog, showing the Sphagnum Moss. 

 (Natural size.) 



century before any practical process of briquetting peat was devised. 

 Early inventors, not unlike some later ones, thought that peat could be 

 condensed and dried by simple pressure. Hundreds of thousands of 

 dollars were spent in demonstrating the fallacy of this theory, a fallacy 

 that is self-evident when once the character of the material is fairly 

 understood. 



