20 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 



remind one of the rocks in the mountains. The red quartzite is the under- 

 lying rock all over the north, and is the formation in which the red pipe- 

 stone layer of the Indians is located. It is supposed by Professor James 

 Hall to belong to the period of the Huronian system, so largely developed 

 about Lake Superior and Canada. 



Fences are made mostly of wood and in the rude way, which indicates 

 either great carelessness or want of timber, Wire fences seem to be the 

 -cheapest and best, and are now coming into general use. Alongside of 

 them may be planted the Osageorange hedge, and by the time the wire 

 fence begins to yield to decay, a good hedge, which will turn any stock, 

 supplies its place and adds greatly to the beauty of the farm. Most of 

 the energetic farmers appreciate this, and are setting out hedges ; but 

 improvements of all kinds must be gradual, from the fact that nearly 

 all the settlers come into the State poor. I believe that in ten years 

 from this time there will be some of the most beautiful farms in Nebraska 

 to be found in the United States. I have urged the farmers to make use 

 of the honey-locust, {Gleditschia tricanthus,) three-thorned locust, a native 

 tree which grows finely, and may be so trained as to make an impene- 

 trable hedge. When cultivated as a forest-tree it makes very handsome 

 and durable timber for fence-posts, railroad-ties, &c. 



Tree-planting has received comparatively little attention in Eichard- 

 son County, on account of the greater amount of native timber. Along 

 the Missouri and most of the larger streams the wooded portions are 

 extending themselves, so that the area is nearly doubled since the coun- 

 try was first settled. Many groves of fine, healthy young trees, of oak, 

 hickory, elm, cotton-wood, black-walnut, honey-locust, &c., are seen. Some 

 persons are so sanguine as to believe that if the fires are kept out of the 

 prairie the whole country will become covered with forest-trees in a few 

 years ; but that is certainly an impossibility, and the old Tertiary forests 

 can be restored only by the hand of man. 



It is my belief that the subject of peat will soon attract the attention 

 of the people of this State. But few persons seem to know what it is, 

 or where it may be found. Their ideas of it are founded upon what they 

 have read of the peat-bogs of Ireland, where it is composed mostly of a 

 kind of moss, or " sphagnum." Peat is really an accumulation of half- 

 decomposed vegetable matter, formed in wet or swampy places, and may 

 therefor be composed of any plants that are fond of growing in wet 

 places. Underneath the water the vegetable matter, which is composed 

 of the roots and stems of the weeds, grass, and rushes growing most 

 abundantly in low places all over the West, undergoes a slow decompo- 

 sition, or combustion, as it weie, so that a sort of imperfect coal is formed, 

 not subject to that pressure by which true coal is formed. In the State 

 of Iowa, opposite Nebraska, I am informed that peat-beds are now worked 

 with success. It is estimated that in Massachusetts alone there are 

 120,000,000 cords of peat, and an organized company is now operating at 

 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, making 100 tons of crude peat per day, which, 

 when dry, makes 30 tons of fuel, ready for use. 



My attention has been directed to several valuable peat-beds in Otoe, 

 Nemaha, and Eichardson Counties, and although the area covered by 

 these wet places is not great in the State, yet I regard it as the most 

 certain source of fuel to the people during the interval that must elapse 

 before the artificial forests will have reached a suitable size to supply 

 the country with timber. There is scarcely a township in the State that 

 will not have a small quantity of peat, which ranks next to coal as fuel. 

 At Falls City I observed some quite extensive beds ; also at Salem. 

 There are several kinds of peat, as hearth- turf, grass-turf, leaf-turf, mud- 



