310 GEOLOGY. 



Logan (township 28 north, 1 and 2 east) is five or six miles in length 

 and of variable breadth. I could find no bottom to this bog with a 

 fifteen -foot pole. This peat I personally tested and found to be or 

 excellent quality. In fact, nearly all the peat that I have tested in 

 this 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 the molar tooth of the gi- 

 gantic beaver {Castor ohioensis), 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 lakelets that 

 gradually became bogs by an accumulation of vegetable matter de- 

 rived from coarse grasses, sedges, rushes, polygonums, duck-weeds, 

 pond-weeds, arrow-weed, etc., lilies, etc. Sphagnum which seems, 

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

 cious districts, only occurs in Nebraska in a bog near Curlew, in Ce- 

 dar County, and one or two other places in the same region. At least 

 I found it nowhere 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 middle 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 conditions necessary for the peculiar 

 vegetation of such formations. Sometimes, too, depressions in the 

 surface where peat is forming are supplied with moisture from ever- 

 flowing springs. 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 quantities 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 crumble. Un- 

 fortunately, 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 

 he utilized, and if it is cheaply furnished, as it can be, the State will 

 fee supplied for a long time from its own territory for manufactur- 

 ing purposes and domestic use, with all the fuel needed. (For an 



