May 25, 19 16] 



NATURE 



269 



universal peace can only be attained when the pre- 

 ponderance of military power has passed into the 

 hands of the pacific peoples. It is, in short, a world 

 in arms that is desiderated. It is argued that as the 

 independence of the States was achieved by an appeal 

 to arms, so its future immunity can only be secured 

 by like means. If force was necessary in the infancy 

 of the nation it is the more essential now, having 

 regard to the command men have secured over the 

 powers of nature. Apprehension is expressed at the 

 eventual attitude of Great Britain as the greatest 

 naval Power, but really with but little justification, 

 since a war with the United States on the part of 

 Great Britain, however much provoked by unscrupu- 

 lous commercial enterprise or methods, is entirely un- 

 thinkable. Rightly considered, the position of the 

 United States is unassailable by any European Power, 

 and having regard to its immense natural resources, to 

 its great and increasing population, to its vast poten- 

 tial and acquired wealth, it occupies a unique position 

 in the civilised world as a preponderating, moderating 

 influence for good in the comity of nations. It is a 

 great factor for the future well-being of mankind that 

 so vast an extent of territory should be under one flag 

 and subject to one polity, and that its people should 

 be mainly concerned with the internal development of 

 its great possibilities. 



Science in all its varied aspects has an immense 

 field in the United States, whether in its application 

 to the development of agriculture (the country is now 

 the greatest grain-producing area of the globe, with 

 the lowest yield per acre), to the electrical utilisation 

 of its abundant water-power, to the exploitation of its 

 vast and varied mineral deposits, to the creation of a 

 great mercantile marine, or to the applications of 

 scientific discovery to the production of synthetic pro- 

 ducts of all kinds. The example of Germany may 

 fitly be followed here. Much has undoubtedly been 

 done in the establishment since 1861 in all the States 

 of well-equipped agricultural colleges and by the extra- 

 ordinarv' munificence of her wealthy citizens in found- 

 ing and endowing colleges and universities. The 

 example of Germany has taught the people much, and 

 it has been accentuated by the efficiency displayed in 

 the course of the war. 



The best minds in the States are deeply engaged in 

 the consideration of the factors which will in their 

 application make for the betterment of all classes of 

 the people, not the least of which is education, wide- 

 spread and sound in all its grades, in which science 

 will play its effective and humanising part, not as a 

 destructive, but as an ameliorating agency. 



The vast expenditure it is recommended to incur 

 upon "preparedness" for war would, if devoted to 

 measures for the better education and amelioration of 

 the conditions of life of the people, be a surer guar- 

 antee of f>eace than any warlike preparations, however 

 effective, with the added advantage that the best 

 interests and the highest happiness of the nation would 

 be secured and advanced. 



THE PEAT INDUSTRIES OF WISCONSIN.^ 



T N a report recently published upon the peat re- 

 ^ sources of Wisconsin. Mr. F. W. Huels describes 

 the attempts which have been made to utilise peat in 

 that State. In one of these, the Lamartine Peat, 

 Light and Power Company manufactured machine- 

 turf on a moor near Fond flu Lac during the years 

 iqo5 and iqo6. The peat, which v/as raised from the 

 bog by a dredger, was macerated and moulded in a 

 modified form of pug-mill. The air-dried turf was I 



1 Wisf onsin Geological and Natural History Survey. Bulletin No. xlv 

 Eco-iomic >erie-5 No. 20. Th» Peat Resources of Wisconsin. By F. W. 

 Huels. Pp. xvii+274. (Madison, Wis. : Published by the .^tate, 1915.) 



sold for twenty-five shillings per ton at Fond du Lac — 

 the nearest town — which was seven miles from the 

 factory. As the fuel contained about 17 per cent, of 

 ash, it is obvious that, at the price, it could not com- 

 pete with coal. The factory was closed in 1906 and 

 has not since been reopened. 



The Whitewater Peat Company in 1902, at a bog 

 more favourably situated with regard to transport 

 facilities than that of Fdnd du Lac, manufactured 

 press-turf for a short time. The estimated cost of the 

 product was eight shillings per ton. With a view of 

 avoiding the necessity of waiting five weeks for the 

 air-drying of the peat, attempts to introduce artificial 

 dr}-ing were made, and, as might have been foreseen, 

 the failure of the company followed. 



As a result of a detailed examination of the whole 

 question, Mr. Huels concludes that little use will be 

 made of the Wisconsin peat deposits until at some 

 period in the distant future fuel has become scarce and 

 expensive. This conclusion, although justifiable in 

 the case of peat, like that of Wisconsin, with high 

 ash content, does not apply to peat of low ash con- 

 tent, such as that found on many of the European 

 moors, and, indeed, it is even possible that the further 

 prosecution of the experiments on the manufacture 

 of power-gas from peat, carried out at the University- 

 of Wisconsin, may lead him to a reconsideration of 

 his decision. 



There is now no doubt that, in districts where peat 

 is plentiful and coal is dear, f>eat of low ash content 

 can be economically utilised for the manufacture of 

 producer-gas or of semi-water gas. Thus the town of 

 Skabersjo, in Sweden, for the past eleven years has 

 been supplied with electricity for illumination and 

 power purposes by a high-voltage current transmitted 

 from a bog three miles from the town, where it is 

 generated in dynamos driven by engines supplied with 

 semi-water gas made from machine-turf in a suction 

 power-gas producer of the Koerting tj-pe. A horse- 

 power hour requires about 45 lb. of air-dried turf, 

 which at the power station costs less than four 

 shillings per ton. Similarly at Visby, turf costing 

 about five shillings per ton is converted into semi- 

 water gas and employed to drive the machinery of a 

 cement works. 



.Apart from its use as moss-litter, peat can be econ- 

 omically employed as a fuel in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of a moor, or on a larger scale it can be 

 converted with advantage into producer-gas, the latter 

 serving as fuel for the manufacture of substances such 

 as glass, or into semi-water gas for power purposes, 

 like that for which it is utilised at Visby. 



THE OXIDATION OF DRYING-OILS. 



MUCH attention is now being paid to the scientific 

 aspects of the phenomenon of "' drv'ing " whereby,, 

 for instance, boiled linseed oil on exfxjsure to the air 

 is converted by oxidation into a hard varnish-like 

 product. The experiments by which Dr. R. S. Morrell 

 was able to isolate a crj'stalline component from a 

 drying-oil (Trans. Chem. Soc., 1912, vol. ci., 2082), 

 namely, by the action of light upon Hankow " Chinese 

 wood oil," have already been noted in these' columns. 

 A further advance is recorded in a paper by Dr. A. H. 

 Salway, which has recently appeared in the Chemical 

 Society's Journal^ (vol. cix., pp. 138-45). This inves- 

 tigator has oxidised linseed oil by shaking it with 

 oxygen at 100°, and trapping the volatile products in 

 a wash-bottle containing water. Not only was the 

 odour of acrolein, CH.ICH-CHO, observed, but the 

 solution showed the chemical reactions of an alde- 

 hyde, and on shaking with silver oxide gave a suffi- 

 cient quantity of silver acr\Mate, CH^ICH'CO-OAg, 



NO. 2430, VOL. 97] 



