48 



THE ILLINOIS FARMER 



Feb. 



the gentlemen who come late into such meetings 

 are i^itirely unconscious of the effect they are pro- 

 ducing. Where the voice of the speaker is not 

 very powerful, or he docs not keep an even tone, 

 and the; closest attention is required from the au- 

 dienco, a creaking pair of boots often causes the loss 

 of a st>itemeutor a, link of an argument essential to 

 the light understanding of the whole subject on 

 hand. I want jou to urge the adoption of a reme- 

 dy on your readers. Bootmakers have told me 

 that Fi'^nuh chalk, or something like it, put be- 

 tween the soles will prevent the evil. The last 

 bootmaker from whom I purchased a pair having 

 assured me positively that they would not annoy 

 me in that way, agreed that if they did he would 

 take the sules apart and apply the corrective. But 

 when I came to wear them I found they screeched 

 horribly ; though as it wa.s in a distant city that I 

 bought them I could not call upon the seller to ful- 

 fill his agreement; so I determined to try some 

 remedy myself, however desperate, to cure them. 

 I had frequently tried saturating the soles with 

 common oils, but though this mitigated the evil it 

 did not cure it. It occured to me that boiled linseed 

 oil might do better. I accordingly applied it to the 

 soles keeping them quite hot during the process to 

 enable them to absorb the more. I did not know 

 but that the hot oil might be ruinons to the boots ; 

 but though I could not aflFord to throw away such 

 an article, I was determined to sacrifice the boots 

 rather than to be so sadly troubled with their noise. 

 I saturated them accordingly with as much oil as 

 they would absorb, and am happy to say that my 

 experiment appears to have succeeded. I have 

 worn them now for a number of weeks and they 

 have been as quiet as the best behaved boots ever 

 made. 1 can march up the broad aisle of a church 

 without disturbing one serious listener, or enter' any 

 other meeting as noiselessly as a lady in velvet slip- 

 pers, and as far as I can see, the boots are none the 

 worse for the application. H. W. 



[As this correspondent has provided his own 

 remedy, we cannot do better than circulate it for 

 the benefit of others. — Hds. Scientific American. 



,^ 



The Peat Beds of Holland. 



The peat beds play a most important patt in the 

 domestic economy of Holland. There is no co^l 

 in Holland — none nearer than the great carbonif- 

 erous basin at Liege. By way of substitute, Na- 

 ture has provided peat. Enormous beds of this 

 deposit lie in the provinces of Friesland, Gronin- 

 gen, Drenthe, and Overyssel. The land there quiv- 

 ers perpetually, and the inhabitants say Het land 

 leeft — the land is alive. Peat was burnt in Hol- 

 land long before coal was burnt in England. The 

 consumption increased 50 per cent, between the 

 years 1834 and 1852, at which latter date it was 

 83.943,630 tons. The peat beds are of two kinds 

 -^high beds, hooge veeneu, and low beds, lage veenen. 

 Aesen, the chief town of Drenthe, stands in the 

 middle of an old peat bed. The fields and gardens 

 by tkeir smiling aspect would never betray their 

 origin. In the high lands peat is supposed to have 

 been formed by the decay of vegetable life, chiefly 

 that of heath and moss, on the surface of the ground, 

 which forms a mould that increases year by year 

 until it has undermined the trees, and having caus- 

 ed their fall, gradually covers them over with a 

 yearly-increasing deposit. Ages afterwards the 



trunks are found whole several feet below the sur- 

 face of the bed. The forests protected the growth 

 of peat and were destroyed by it. 



In the low beds, peat is formed by the decay of 

 aquatic plants under water, which, dying, fall to 

 the bottom, and form layer upon layer. These are 

 often floating upon the surface of the water. 

 Sometimes, after a long drouth, in which the peat 

 is left stranded on the bottom of the marsh, the 

 plants take root and prevent the bed from rising 

 when the marsh becomes again full of water. At 

 other times the beds are carried away by the force 

 of the wind, and lawsuits have arisen, in which the 

 plaintiff sought to recover possession of an estate 

 which he had floated away, with all the owner's live 

 stock on it, and stranded itself within the bounda- 

 ries of a neighbor's property. The Romans were 

 greatly alarmed by the floating forests in the Ruy- 

 derzee, which, more formidable than Birnam 

 Woods to Macbeth, came sailing towards them, 

 and threatened their galleys with destruction. 

 The modern Dutchman, less superstitious, but not 

 less anxious to prevent the land from playing tru- 

 ant, is accustomed to fasten these fugitive estates 

 by ropes attached to stakes fixed in the more sta- 

 ble earth. 



The working of the peat beds gives employment 

 to a large number of hands. The first step is to 

 drain the bed by digging trenches son.e 24 feet 

 apart, and from three to four feet deep, lined with 

 an earth wall to prevent the peat from falling in. 

 These trenches are gradually deepened, until some 

 eight years from the commencement of operations 

 the peat is fit to be dug. One great danger in 

 working these beds is that of setting them on fire. 

 M. Esquiros, from whose most interesting de- 

 scription we have borrowed some of the foregoing 

 facts, mentions a case in which the fire lasted 

 twelve days and the only meaas by which it could 

 be stopped was to dig a trench round the burning 

 field. 



The chief of the low beds is at Wateringen, near 

 the Hague. 



As the working of these beds necessarily causes 

 the formation of a lake, the government lays great 

 restriction upon this occupation. When permis- 

 sion is given, the proprietor skims ofl^ the ground, 

 which consists of valuable agricultural clay land, 

 and carefully removes it to another portion of the 

 field. The clay is usually performed in the winter. 

 In the spring, workmen clad in long waJ;er-pr»of 

 boots descend into the water, cut the peat beneath 

 the water, and then, guided entirely by their eye, 

 seize the sods, and pitch them into a barge. This 

 barge is emptied some six times a day into a wood- 

 en trough 12 feet square and two feet deep, where 

 the peat is trodden down by human feet until it ii 

 kneaded into dough — a process which by force of 

 contrast as well as of similarity recalls the grape 

 presssng of Italy. The peat is afterwards taken 

 out, arranged in blocks, covered with planks, and 

 allowed to harden. It is then carried to the vari- 

 ous towns in barges, the conductors of which are 

 forbidden to smoke. 



The peat of the low beds is preferred to that of 

 the high. To put against this, the working of the 

 low peat beds leaves a lake, which the high beds 

 do not. 



Latterly, a daring speculator bought up these 

 lakes at a low price, dyked them, drained them, 

 and obtained as a reward of his enterprise some 



