1897-8. TRANSACTIONS. 83 



ter and peat elsewhere than in the Netherlands. Sweden, 

 Oldenburg, Hanover and Bavaria are known be producing 

 largely of this material. In England, too, the manufacture 

 is established in the neighborhood of Doncaster and Goole, 

 Yorkshire. In 1896 I visited the moss litter beds near the 

 latter city, and found them thoroughly drained, as in the case 

 of the Dutch moors. There were, however, no canals to be 

 seen for effecting the transport of the material, light railways 

 being substituted for them. I saw the mill at work for teas- 

 ing and packing the litter, the machinery in which much 

 resembles that employed on the Dutch moors. The material 

 packed had evidently had ample opportunity for becoming 

 dry because the mill building was filled with fi.ne floating 

 dust, like snuff, which however had not the same irritating 

 properties. At the time of my visit the Goole and other 

 works of a similar character in England were suffering from 

 extreme depression in the price of their product. When I 

 visited the Dutch moors four years previously, one of the 

 gentlemen of our party was a Mr, Lancaster from Birming- 

 ham, who took as close an interest in the bogs and studied 

 them as thoroughly- as I did. This gentleman belonged to a 

 firm of chartered accountants who had been entrusted with 

 an examination of the property from a mercantile point of 

 view, and in order to the possible formation of a limited 

 company for working it. It seems that, subsequently, the for- 

 mation of the company was accomplished and that its opera- 

 tions brought down the price of moss litter in- London from 

 24s. per ton to nearly one-half that rate. Hence those tears 

 on the part of the Yorkshire people, who could not possibly 

 compete with the Dutch in the matter of labour or freight. 



Coming now nearer home, we have to remark, as regards 

 the production of moss litter in Canada, that two attempts 

 have been made, one at Musquash, N.B., and another at Wel- 

 land, Ontario. In the former case I am extremely sorry to 

 say the capital embarked in the enterprise has not yielded any 

 return. Whether we are to conclude from this that the inher- 

 ent and climatic difficulties of the undertaking are insur- 

 "mouniable, or that grave errors have been committed in con- 

 ducting the work is not quite certain. I am, however, inclin- 

 ed to the latter supposition, and venture to point out two 

 circumstances which may have gone a long way to render the 

 venture abortive. In the first place no systematic survey, 

 laying out, and consolidation of the bog was attempted. 

 There was no difficulty in the matter of levels, and a dr^in. 



