PEAT ASHES. 311 



frciin plants that have lived must be useful to plants that are about 

 to live, or that are actually living. Although the utility of wood 

 ashes, then, is generally admitted, the numerous purposes to which 

 they are applied in the arts, and their high price, which is the con- 

 sequence of this, enable the husbandman to employ them but rarely 

 on his land ; they are almost always lixiviated in order to procure 

 the carbonate of potash they contain. In countries which are thick- 

 ly wooded, indeed, the trees are actually cut down and burned for 

 the sake of their ashes, just as oxen are run down and slaughtered 

 in the vast plains of South America for the sake of their hides. 



The good effect of wood ashes upon vegetation is known to com- 

 munities the least advanced in civilization. The Indians of South 

 America burn the stems and leaves of the maize in order to improve 

 the soil. The same practice occurs among the natives of Africa : 

 on the banks of the river Zaire, according to Tuckey, the ground is 

 prepared by having little piles of dried herbs placed on it, to which 

 hre is set ; and upon tha spots where the ashes are collected, they 

 sow peas and Indian corn ; these ashes are in fact the only manure 

 that is employed. In England, wood ashes are esteemed as parti- 

 cularly useful upon gravelly soils ; about 40 bushels per acre are 

 applied in the spring, where the article can be obtained. 



The lye-ashes from the soap-boiler contain a small quantity of 

 soluble saline matter which has escaped the lixiviation, mixed with 

 a large proportion of lime, partly in the state of carbonate, the lime 

 having been added to bring the carbonate of potash employed in the 

 manufacture of soap into the caustic state. This ash or refuse is 

 much sought after, and is administered in quantities that vary from 

 45 to 70 bushels per acre, a dose in which its action is felt for ten 

 years or more. In wooded districts, where there is a good deal of 

 potash prepared, ash of this kind is obtained in large quantity ; it is 

 there employed alternately with organic manures, wishes are ap- 

 plied in the same way as lime, with this difference, that it is held 

 better not to plough them in until they have received a little rain. 

 There are places where the ashes that remain in the lixiviating tub 

 are thrown on in the dose of 170 bushels per acre. 



Turf 07' peat ashes. Peat is the result of a peculiar spontaneous 

 change that takes place in vegetables. It is produced in bogs or 

 swamps, and in connection with stagnant waters ; turfy deposites are 

 also encountered on the banks of rivers, in valleys, at the bottoms 

 of former lakes, and at the mouths of rivers. Peat is met with 

 from the level of the sea to the elevated platforms of the A^osges 

 and Alps ; it lies in horizontal beds, frequently divided by strata of 

 grave!, sand, or clay. It is always a product of comparatively re- 

 cent formation, a fact which is attested by the thin layers of vege- 

 table soil that lie over it in many places, and the animal remains 

 and products of human industry that are frequently encountered 

 in it. 



The state of decomposition of the vegetables that form turf or 

 peat is seldom so far advanced as to make the remains of the plants 

 which compose it doubtful. It is of different kinds : hard or woody, 



