aughet.] FUEL FEOM THE SURFACE-DEPOSITS. 263 



worked will be found in the State. (Hayden's Report for 1870, p. 134, &c.) 

 There is, however, no question about the great quantity of peat in Ne- 

 braska. Hayden mentions many localities where it is found. (Report for 

 1867, 1868, and 1869.) It is also found on the tributaries and head- 

 waters of the Logan, the Elkhorn, the Blue, and on Stinking River, and 

 other tributaries of the Republican. One peat-bog on the Logan (town- 

 ship 28 north, 1 and 2 east) is five or six miles in length and of vari- 

 able breadth. I could find no bottom to this bog with a fifteen-foot 

 pole. This peat I personally tested and found to be of excellent quality. 

 In fact, nearly all the peat that I have tested in the State is fully up to 

 the average in quality. A singularly good article is found at Pittsburgh, 

 on the Blue River, where the deposit is also quite extensive. Among 

 the animal-remains submitted to me for examination from this bed was 

 a molar tooth of the gigantic beaver (Castor oMoensis)^ proving that this 

 animal existed in Nebraska in times geologically recent. The most of 

 the peat-beds that I have examined seem to have been formed in lake- 

 lets that gradually became bogs by an accumulation of vegetable mat- 

 ter derived from coarse grasses, sedges, rushes, polygonums, duck-weeds, 

 pond-weeds, arrow-weed, &c, lilies, &c. Sphagnum, which seems to 

 form the mass of organic matter in peat-bogs of granitic and siliceous 

 districts, only occurs in Nebraska in a bog near Curlew, in Cedar County, 

 and one or two other places in the same region. At least I found it no^ 

 where else. Many of these peat-bogs are now so far advanced as to be 

 dry enough to be wagoned over in midsummer,, but through the mid- 

 dle of which a stream of water is still flowing. Others have no visible 

 outlet, but retain the water poured into them, when the spring and June 

 rains fall, during the remainder of the year, and thus supply the condi- 

 tions necessary for the peculiar vegetation of such formations. Some- 

 times, too, depressions in the surface where peat is forming are supplied 

 with moisture from ever-flowing spriugs. The beginnings of many of 

 these peat- beds date back at least to the close of the Loess age, so 

 that sufficient time has elapsed for the accumulation of great quanti- 

 ties of this material. Peat can be cheaply taken out of a bog with a 

 spade, and laid up like cord-wood under cover to dry, when it is ready 

 for use. The objections to using it thus prepared is its liability to crum- 

 ble. Unfortunately, to prepare it by molding and pressing requires 

 some capital for apparatus, and this is one reason why these beds have 

 not yet been worked. In some places, too, wood-fuel is yet cheap, and 

 in others coal from abroad is easily obtained, and these causes have also 

 operated to delay the use of peat for fuel. But such treasures cannot 

 remain unused forever. Eventually this peat must be utilized, and, if 

 it is cheaply furnished, as it can be, the State will be supplied for a long 

 time from its own territory for manufacturing purposes and domestic 

 use with all the fuel needed. (For an able discussion of peat in Ne- 

 braska, see Hayden's Final Report of Geological Survey of Nebraska, 

 p. 69.) 



WATER RESOURCES OP NEBRASKA, 



Running streams are an evidence of the degree of moisture in a region, 

 and with these Nebraska is well supplied. Any good map of the State 

 will show numerous rivulets flowing into the larger creeks and rivers. 

 But no map that I have yet seen does or can do full justice to the num- 

 berless small streams that are found in the State. Having traveled, as 

 a naturalist and explorer, over a large part of Northern Nebraska, I fre- 

 quently came across small streams with beautiful bottoms, where even 

 the published plats of the public surveys failed to indicate them. In 



