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123 
valuable manure. Many of the swamps an(i mai-shes, where this com- 
bustible abounds, are overgrown with bushes and trees, but those which 
are free from timber are generally covered with moss and cranberry vines. 
The latter variety trembles when w^alked upon. The peat is so soft be- 
low the surface that a pole may be thrust many feet into it. 
Coal and wood are now so expensive, that peat must come into ge- 
neral use among a large class of people, and it ought to be worth at 
least $1 per cord in the swamp, where wood is worth $3. Marine peat, 
which is abundant in the salt naarshes of Long Island and the adjacent 
islands, is of an inferior quality, and is not worth notice as a combusti- 
ble, though it may be of great value as a manure, w^hen rotted with 
lime. 
Another use suggests itself to my mind, which is, that it may be ap- 
plied to the manufacture of carbonate of soda, by burning it. I do not 
know that such an application of this material has ever been made. 
Peat is common on Staten Island, and the ashes of this combustible 
have been used there successfully as a fertilizer.* 
Salt Marshes. 
The marine marsh alluvions of the coast of New- York are of great ex- 
tent . The relative proportion of salt marsh on the coasts of Queens, Kings 
and Richmond counties, is much greater than on those of Suffolk county. 
These marshes are now forming, and have been for an unknown period 
of time. In some places they are washing away, in others they steadily 
increase in extent. I have been credibly informed that grass now grows 
on a marsh near Rockaway, where vessels have floated within the me- 
mory of my informant. On Coney Island, also, Mr. John Wyckoff in- 
formed me, that many places which were ponds and pools within his 
recollection, now produce good crops of grass. A very aged man also 
recollects having seen the surf roll in at the foot of the upland north of 
the marsh towards the east end of Coney Island. A broad marsh now 
intervenes between the upland and the beach. Numerous local facts of 
this kind, of less remarkable character, might be brought before the pub- 
lic: but in an economical point of view, the mere expression of the ge- 
neral fact, that the marshes, as an aggregate, are steadily increasing, is 
sufficient. 
A combination of several of the causes producing salt marshes, is par- 
ticularly favorable to their rapid increase; such, for instance, as the allu- 
* Cultivator, Nov. or Dec. 1837. 
