PEAT AND ITS USES 45 



elusion that the ill-effects in the present case are due 

 to the marked acidity of the manure, this acidity 

 being due to organic acids in the soil and not to 

 mineral ones. I find in the soil (in which the manure 

 has been used) iron compounds present in the 

 ferrous or not fully oxidized conditions, and it 

 would seem to me likely that these are the result of 

 the liberal use of an organically acid body such as 

 the peat-moss, and that an unhealthy, imperfectly 

 oxidized condition of the soil has been brought about. 

 Very probably, if the manure be kept longer and 

 allowed to rot more thoroughly, it becomes more 

 aerated and oxidized, and then would not show the 

 ill-effects noticed. This, it seems, is the possible 

 explanation of what has occurred in the present 

 case, and it is the explanation at least which would 

 suggest itself to me." 



In a later chapter it will be necessary to consider 

 the composition of peat in some detail, and to show 

 how, in the case of humogen, the process which takes 

 two years to accomplish when the peat is left in a 

 heap is carried out in a few days by suitable bacterial 

 treatment. It may perhaps be as well to insist here 

 that the addition of humogen to the soil is not under- 

 taken so much with the object of enriching the soil 

 with the nitrogenous and other organic compounds 

 contained in the peat, but that it is designed more 

 particularly as a medium to facilitate the growth oi 

 the bacteria with which it is inoculated, and to 

 enable them to work vigorously in changing the 

 nitrogen of the air into nitrogenous plant food. 



