PEAT AS MANURE. 191 



of the hay is better than where we re-seed oftener. But upon 

 other soils, which are more easily ploughed and more easily 

 worked, I am accustomed to apply manure to the corn crop, 

 and either seed after the corn, and then follow witli grass, or 

 perhaps grain. 



Mr. Brown. In the first place, Mr. Chairman, I want to 

 thank you sincerely for the texts you have given us in your 

 paper — texts sufficient to keep us in discussion three days, and 

 a profitable discussion, too. I think if we should devote the 

 whole time to one topic, it would be the best thing we could do, 

 and that is, the value and uses of peat. It makes no difference 

 whether it is coarse or fine, I presume. I notice that Prof. 

 Johnston and other chemists call it peat, no matter what' its 

 condition is — whether it is in an advanced stage of decomposi- 

 tion, or whether coarse enough to cut and burn for fuel — as it 

 often is on the meadows. I think the hopes of a progressive 

 agriculture in a considerable part of the State of Maine, in the 

 eastern portions of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts 

 and Connecticut, depend entirely upon their peat swamps, and 

 the peat in the valleys between high hills, which is infinitely 

 better than the peat of the bogs. You find low places or tracts 

 of high land between ranges of hills, and there are the best 

 deposits of peat to be found in the country. It has been accu- 

 mulating for ages, thousands, perhaps millions of years, from 

 the vegetable matter of the hills, leaves, decayed branches, dead 

 grass, and all sorts of herbage ; and at the same time that these 

 have been decaying, some of the elements of the hills, the 

 manures, I would say, are washed down into these low places, 

 and you find a deposit from one to ten and twenty feet deep. 

 There we get the best peat that is to be found anywhere ; and 

 that peat is manure itself. 



Now, is not this worth carting on to your lands, which have 

 been rolibed of thess valuable materials ? Prof. Dana, says, in 

 his Muck Manual, that he made experiments over and over 

 again with pure cow manure and with peat, and the results 

 were just the same. That is, not precisely the same, but so 

 nearly, that they need no questioning ; and they show us, that 

 it is just as well to go to these peat deposits and take them up 

 to our barns, or on to our lands, as it is to accumulate the 

 droppings of cows, at a much greater cost than peat. 



