298 DR. ANGUS SMITH ON PEAT. 



neighbours, or, if compression should succeed, growing 

 also oil and perhaps ammonia, when that can be economi- 

 cally removed. But care would be required to have the 

 proper plants and to feed them properly ; and that is not, 

 so far as I see, to be expected in the immediate future, 

 without some previous cautious experimenting. 



Collected Observations. 



As it was not my intention to write so much as I have 

 done on peat, I had got this length before I examined its 

 literature ; and perhaps it may be as well to introduce it 

 here, so far as it seems to be necessary. It is not easy to 

 exhaust such a subject; and I shall attempt only to give 

 certain specimens. And first a little must be said of the 

 etymology of the words turf and peat. 



Beckmann quotes various authorities, saying that at cer- 

 tain distinct periods the use of peat was discovered in certain 

 places in Germany and France. I think it clear that the 

 use is far older than history — in Germany, at any rate ; and 

 when it is said that its value was found by any named per- 

 son, it means probably that the wood had been exhausted 

 and the people had taken then to burning peat instead. 



I prefer the name peat although turf is an old German 

 and English one ; but it is confusing, as it means also a 

 grassy sod. The number of compounds beginning with 

 Torf in Kaltschmidt's Dictionary is 39, besides those that 

 end with the word ; so that it has attained great importance, 

 as indeed the substance had even in Pliny's time. 



I do not doubt that our word peat is the Low German 

 Putte, of the High German Pfiitze, and that it has come 

 from the Chauci or their neighbours straight to us, and 

 probably was the name used by them when Pliny wrote. 

 It means swamp, standing water, and well, and has the 

 same origin, if, indeed, we may not call it almost the same 



