20 AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 



Their peaty character is acquired by the growth and partial 

 decay through successive ages, of various aquatic plants, the 

 principal being the sphagnums and lichens. In swamps, 

 many of which, were probably small lakes in their origin, 

 the peat is found of an unknown depth, reaching in some 

 instances beyond 30 and 40 feet. On declivities and occasion- 

 al levels, the peat is sometimes only* a few inches in thickness. 

 It is of a blackish or dark brown color, and exists, in various 

 stages of decay, from the almost perfect state of fallen stumps 

 and leaves, to an imperfectly defined, ligneous mass, or even 

 an impalpable powder. 



In its natural state, it is totally unfit for any profitable 

 vegetation, being saturated with water, of an antiseptic nature 

 which effectually resists putrefaction or decay. When thrown 

 out of its native bed and exposed to drain for a few months, 

 much of it is fit for fuel; and it is always of advantage to the 

 muck heaps, as an absorbent of the liquid and gaseous portions 

 of animal and other volatile manures; or it is of great 

 utility when applied alone to a dry, gravelly or sandy soil. 



Cultivation of peat soils. When it is desirable to culti- 

 vate a peat soil, the first process is to drain it effectually of 

 all the moisture which has given to it, and sustained its 

 present character. The drains mnst be made sufficiently 

 near, and on every side of il; and so deep as to prevent any 

 injurious capillary attraction of the water to the surface. 

 When it has been properly drained, the hummocks if any, 

 must be cut up with the mattock or spade and thrown inio 

 heaps, and burnt after they are sufficiently dried, and the ashes 

 scattered over the surface. These afford the best top 

 dressing it can receive. Sand or fine gravel, with a thorough 

 dressing of barn-yard manure and effete lime, should then be 

 added. On some of these, according as their composition 

 approaches to ordinary soils, good crops of oats, corn, roots, 

 &c., may be grown, but they are better suited to meadows, 

 and when thus prepared, they will yield great burthens of 

 clover, timothy, red top, and such of the other grasses as are 

 adapted to moist soils. Subsequent dressings of sand, lime, 

 manure and wood ashes, or of all combined, may be afterwards 

 required when the crops arc deficient, or the grasses degen- 

 erate. 



Peat contains a large proportion of carbon, and the silicates 

 in which such soils are deficient, and which they procure only 

 in small proportions from the Farm-yard manure, but more 



