48 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



The peat, which is extracted by cutting or dredging, is conveyed 

 to the works in boats by canals in the turbary and put into a 

 tank lined with boards and deepening at the bottom toward the 

 center. The peat is thence raised by a chain of buckets to the 

 hopper of the dividing apparatus, which consists of a series of 

 cylinders 4 feet long, but differing in diameter, fitted with knives 

 4 inches long and 1% inches thick. These cylinders rotate 

 and tear up the peat, which is next ground in a mill with conical 

 surfaces like a coffee mill, after the addition of sufficient water. 

 Between the cylinders and the conical mill is a sieve with brushing 

 apparatus which retains filaments and grosser particles and 

 allows the rest of the peat, now in a mudlike state, to pass 

 through. The muddy liquid falls into tanks, where it is agitated 

 by a shaft carrying arms, while a stream of water keeps flowing 

 in at the bottom, and the muddy mixture is removed to a certain 

 depth from the surface by a chain of buckets and poured into a 

 wooden trough communicating with filtering tanks. Heav}' ma- 

 terials such as sand, fall to the bottom during the agitation and 

 are thrown away." After four or five hours, most of the water 

 is removed from the peat in the filtering tanks, and the soft 

 material can then be divided into blocks in exactly the same 

 manner as in the original bog. 



Weher^s process?- Kt the works of Maffei & Weber at Staltach 

 in Bavaria, " the peat is cut in pieces of about a cubic foot, worked 

 into pulp, molded without compression into brick-shape pieces, 

 or bricks, as they are termed, and dried under cover, first by 

 simple exposure to the air, but afterwards by artificial heat. A 

 gradual contraction in drying gives the peat the aspect of com- 

 pressed peat and it is in no wise inferior to it, either in tenacity 

 or compactness. 



The peat is reduced to homogeneous pulp in a mill consisting 

 of a vertical, sheet-iron cylinder, 4 feet high and 3 feet in diam- 

 eter, open at the top, in which rotates a vertical shaft carrying 

 eight blades. The blades are curved, triangular in cross section, 



^ Percy, John. Metallurgy, p. 240-44. 

 Dingler's Polytechnisches Journal. 153 : 272-86. 



