540 
On Peat Charcoal. 
coal is burnt In heaps, so that the air has not much access to the 
fire, which is put out as soon as a sufficient quantity is charred. 
By this means the carbon contained in the peat is left unconsumed, 
as is proved by the ashes being black in colour. The heaps in 
which peat-ashes are burnt are suffered to consume away with 
full access to the air till the fire goes out of itself, which it hardly 
ever does till all the organic or combustible part of the peat has 
been consumed, leaving unburnt the inorganic or incombustible 
portion wliich in some peat soils exists, but in a very small propor- 
tion to the whole bulk. 
Peat-ashes may be Very useful as a manure, if the peat happens 
to contain such inorganic substances as carbonate of lime, sul- 
phate of lime, or other fertilizing earths. It is to the presence of 
these substances that the famous peat-ashes of Holland, and those 
of Newbury, owe much of their fertilizing powers: the latter 
contain a portion of lime, which, in the course of ages, has been 
washed from the chalk hills down to the peat that has accumulated 
in the valleys. Should the peat have but a small proportion of 
inorganic matter, and a portion even of that may be of a dele- 
terious nature, we may burn our heaps till they are almost entirely 
consumed, and but few ashes remain to repay us for the trouble 
we have taken ; and these, from some injurious svibstance con- 
tained in the peat, of little value when applied to the land. 
The sources from whence peat derives its inorganic substances are 
the foundation upon which it has accumulated ; in course of time 
the earthy matter which lies beneath will, in a greater or less 
degree, become intermixed with the overlying mass of peat. In- 
organic matter is also washed from any higher ground diat may 
surround the peaty district, and earthy matter has been brought 
by riveis from other formations, and these rivers, having overflowed 
their banks, have deposited on the peat any earthy or vegetable 
substance brought down by the water; in this manner those rich 
alluvial tiacts of land which border on our rivers have been 
formed. 
Real peat is composed principally of organic or combustible 
matter produced by the gradual decay of plants which have grown 
in moist situations; the remains of these plants form a soil and 
seedbed for the vegetation and growth of a succeeding generation 
of plants of the same tribe, and as these die and decay they add 
to the mass; and thus the peat or bog goes on gradually accu- 
nuilating so long as the situation is favourable to the growth and 
partial decay of plants. In this manner has a large extent of 
country become covered with inert vegetable matter, which, in its 
undrained and uncultivated state, is but the habitation of wild- 
fowl, barely of sudicieut solidity to allow the passage of man or of 
small animals over its wet and swampy surface, but cajjable by 
