PEAT. 345 



addition, that such conclusions will often be more 

 safely derived from the nature of the peat, than its 

 bulk, or thickness; the progress towards bituminization 

 always denoting anticjuity, while its alternations with 

 alluvial strata will afford other obvious grounds of 

 judgment. 



Considered as a soil, peat differs according to the 

 sources of its production ; and thus it may be pow- 

 dery, or semifluid, or spongy, or fibrous and semi- 

 organic, or compact ; as, under these different condi- 

 tions, its specific gravity varies, so as sometimes to 

 exceed that of water, when it produces the best fuel. 

 It is not within my limits to enquire into the treat- 

 ment and application of peat soils ; but it is always 

 useful to correct error, and to reduce volumes to 

 words, by a recurrence to general principles. In a 

 loose and powdery state, peat is already fitted for agri- 

 culture ; while, being soil and manure both, it is eter- 

 nal. When compact, it will neither receive a seed nor 

 transmit a root ; while, if wet, it is not merely averse 

 to other vegetation than that which produced it, but 

 will neither admit the tread of animals nor the ope- 

 rations of the plough. Nothing therefore can well be 

 more simple than the theory of its treatment ; which 

 is, to drain the wet and pulverize the dry. It is no 

 very abstruse matter to determine how these things 

 may be done ; while they who have produced their 

 respective volumes on this subject, in Scotland, might 

 have saved much writing had they enquired how na- 

 ture assists, in England and Holland, in rendering peat 

 a fertile soil ; though they should also have recol- 

 lected that there are two elements in the calculation, 

 the sun and the rains, which they cannot command. 

 Respecting mixtures and manures, of which more 

 than enough has also been written, there is nothing 



