342 
PEAT IN NEW-YORK. 
grounds is not yet fully appreciated ; but when this 
combustible shall come into use, as it soon will, 
owners of those peat-lands which are convenient 
to a market must realize a large amount ; and it 
should be remembered that these grounds, when 
dug once, are not exhausted like a coal-mine, but in 
a few years, if properly managed, will be renovated, 
and afford a new supply. A peat meadow, with a 
thickness of only three feet, will give more than 
1000 cords per acre. This combustible may be 
furnished at so low a rate that the poor may have 
an abundance of fuel. The odour of peat is un- 
pleasant to some persons, but not more so than 
that of bituminous coal. Peat is usually cut out 
in pieces like bricks, by a kind of spade with a 
raised edge on one side, and is then dried like un- 
baked bricks, and afterward stacked or housed for 
use." 
Every swamp either contains peat, or a vast 
amount of vegetable matter which may be usefully 
employed in agriculture. It may also be employed 
for producing gaslight, as in France. Peat is often 
used for manure, after rotting it with lime in the 
barnyard or compost heap. Peat is not confined to 
fresh-water lakes and marshes, but also abounds in 
those which are salt. Mather estimates that the 
first geological district of New- York contains at 
least 3,000,000 cords of peat, some of which has as 
great a specific gravity as bituminous coal, and is 
nearly or quite as valuable for fuel. 
" Perhaps it would be saying too much," says 
Prof. Emmons, " to assert that peat is more valua- 
ble than coal ; but when we consider that it con- 
tains a gaseous matter equal in illuminating power 
to oil or coal gas, that its production is equally 
cheap, and, in addition to this, that it is a valuable 
manure if properly prepared, its real and intrinsic 
worth cannot fall far short of the poorer kinds of 
coal. There is one consideration which commends 
