STATE GEOLOGIST. 195 



to the pressure of a powerful hydraulic press. This condenses 

 it to one-third of its original volume, and three-fifths of its orig- 

 inal weight, through loss of moisture. At the large peat bog 

 near Liancourt, on the Northern Railway, nineteen leagues 

 north of Paris, the peat after having been thoroughly mixed 

 and worked together, is moulded under great pressuie into small 

 bricks, which, when dried, are heavier than water. The moulded 

 peat is worth in Paris 20 francs the. ton of 1,000 kilogrammer, 

 (2,204 pounds avoirdupois.) The amount raised at this bog 

 annually is 10,000 to 12,000 tons. At Rheims 14,000 tons arc 

 annually produced. A peat bog in the vicinity of New York 

 city, six feet deep and forty acres in extent, is stated by Prof. 

 Mather to have yielded a fuel which retailed for $4 50 per cord, 

 realizing $4,500 per acre, a little more than a third of which 

 was expenses. 



For mechanical, and not unusually for domestic purposes, the 

 dried peat is first converted into a coke or charcoal, of which it 

 yields from 40 to 42 per cent. Peat charcoal sells in Paris for 

 about the same price as wood charcoal, or 13 francs the 100 

 kilogrammes — the relative prices of wood or peat charcoal, 

 mineral coal and wood, being as the numbers 13, 4^, 4 J respect- 

 ively. This proportion would of course vary with the relative 

 abundance of peat, wood and mineral coal, in any country. 

 Peat cuke occupies about the same space, weight for weight, 

 as ordinary coke, and only half that of charcoal, having a spe- 

 cific gravity of 1.040, that of charcoal from hard woods aver- 

 aging 0.505. For heating purposes, T tons of peat coke are 

 equivalent to 6 tons of good coal coke. For the manufacture 

 67id working of iron, peat cofce is pronounced decidedly supe- 

 rior to charcoal, both in consequei.ee of its greater heating 

 property and its production of a superior quality of iron. It is 

 extensively employed in preference to any other fuel in many 

 of the furnaces of France, Bavaria, Wurtenibcrg, Bohemia and 

 Sweden. For steam producing purposes, compressed peat has 

 bejn proved at least equal to any other fuel. A factitious coal 

 u prepared from peat by the Dublin Steam Navigation Com- 



