204 Peat Charcoal. [Oct.» 



PEAT CHARCOAL. 



The use of charcoal as a fertilizer is generally well known. 

 Its expense, however, often precludes its use. To cut down a 

 forest for the sake of the charcoal it would furnish for agriculture 

 would undoubtedly be bad policy. As a substitute, however, for 

 the ordinary wood charcoal, it is certainly important for many to 

 know, that peat charcoal will prove an excellent substitute. In 

 some respects it may be regarded as a superior article to wood 

 charcoal, inasmuch as it will be obtained in a state of fine sub- 

 division, and consequently in a state to operate to the best ad- 

 vantage. In the state of New York peat is a most abundant 

 product. In Champlain, Clinton county, a peat swamp exists, 

 which extends between one and two miles in length, and half a 

 mile in breadth; besides many in other parts of the county which 

 occupy less extent. In Warren, in Warrensburgh, a peat swamp 

 is known of about fifty acres, the middle portion of which is 

 sixty feet deep. So, in most of the towns upon the Hudson river 

 peat is an abundant product, though rarely in extensive deposits. 

 In the western counties it is still more abundant, and is accom- 

 panied with marl. The great level extending west from Rome, 

 contains an inexhaustible supply of this substance, and which in 

 process of time must become of vast importance to the state. 

 Those who have access to the geological reports will be able to 

 learn where a vast amount of peat is deposited ; and yet New 

 York is not a cold and w^et part of the Union. Many of the de- 

 pressions upon higher parts of the state are small basins of peat 

 and marl. 



The peat is cut from its bed by a spade, in rectangular pieces 

 of a convenient size, and which when dry will shrink to the size 

 of a brick. It is necessary that these pieces should be dried by 

 exposure to the sun and winds for four or five days. When dried 

 sufficiently to ignite, they may be arranged in conical heaps, or 

 in the form of an ordinary coal-pit. At the bottom a parcel of 

 wood must be laid, which when ignited will set fire to the mass. 



It is scarcely necessary to add, that the fire must always be 

 smothered, and never suffered to break through the outside. To 

 the first mass, when it has ignited, more peat may be added from 

 time to time, when the fire \w\\\ continue to extend outwai'ds. A 

 precaution which it may be well to observe is, to lay the pits 

 where water is accessible, in case the fire is likely to obtain the 

 mastery. 



Peat coal may be considered about one half as valuable as 

 wood coal, or $2.50 per hundred bushels, or sixty to sixty-five 



