IMPROVEMENT OF PEAT LANDS. 31 



tageously to the health of their vicinity as to pecuniary profit. 

 Upon a small scale, great improvements have already been made, 

 in this way, in several parts of New England, within my own 

 knowledge, with a skill, intelligence, and success, highly hon 

 orable to those persons who have accomplished them. 



One of the greatest enterprises of this kind, probably, ever 

 undertaken by individual effort, was that of Lord Kames, sixty 

 or seventy years since, at Blair Drummond, in the neighborhood 

 of Stirling. This was not an improvement of the peat soil, but 

 an actual removal of it. Underlaying the peat was a bed of 

 deep and rich alluvion. From the walls of peat, or the cuttings 

 which appear at the sides or bounds of this improvement, for, 

 though an immense body was taken away, an extensive tract is 

 still to be found, the depth of peat removed, as it appeared to 

 me, must have been six feet or more. It is stated to have been 

 in some places full sixteen feet. It was necessary to obtain a 

 command of water sufficient to carry the turf into the River 

 Forth. A wheel twenty-eight feet in diameter, and eight feet 

 wide, was employed to raise the water, which it did at the rate 

 of six and a half tons per minute. The water thus raised was 

 directed into channels cut in the moss, along the sides of which 

 men were stationed, cutting the moss into pieces, and tumbling 

 it into the current of water, by which it was floated into the 

 river, and thence much of it into the sea. 



This was really a vast undertaking. Whether the expenses 

 were met by the advantages gained, I am not able to say ; but 

 a large tract of most excellent land was uncovered and brought 

 into cultivation, and which, as I had the pleasure of witnessing, 

 now yields as good crops as are ordinarily grown in the country. 



Enterprises of this nature must, of course, be rare, and in but 

 few circumstances practicable ; but such a work does infinite 

 honor to the boldness which conceived, and the perseverance 

 and labor which executed it. The interesting and extremely 

 picturesque neighborhood of Stirling is all classic ground, made 

 memorable by acts of prowess and heroism in the civil wars 

 which prevailed here, and by dreadful arid bloody affrays. In 

 looking at this magnificent improvement of Lord Kames, in 

 comparison with these memorials of revenge and hate, of misery 

 and murder, (for aggressive war deserves no milder name,) I could 

 not help feeling how infinitely higher is the honor of subduing 



