8 BULLETIN 802, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
not only to increased production, but also to the larger range of 
crop plants which is so essential to a sound and secure foundation of 
peat-land agriculture. 
In European countries the cultivation of the better grade of cereals 
is carried on upon peat deposits covered with a layer of sand (the 
"Cunrau " or " Eimpau " method, in vogue since 1862) and upon peat 
areas from which most of the organic material has been removed. 
The practicability of combining the agricultural and commer 1 
cial utilization of a peat deposit for the production of fuel and food 
is no longer a questionable procedure. The problem has been well 
solved in Holland, where certain types of material are removed 
partly on account of their value for manufacturing purposes ; largely, 
however, because the mineral subsoil has an equally, if not greater, 
value for the production of garden truck and for staple crops. Of 
the two methods of developing peat land the practice of sanding 
peat deposits has not always proved satisfactory. European experi- 
ence seems to show that the amount of injury from diseases is very 
small compared with losses in yield from causes due to the selection 
of peat areas which contained plant remains with an unfavorable 
decay capacity or in which there appeared in the sand cover, as time 
went on, relatively injurious compounds from the underlying poorly 
aerated organic and mineral subsoils. It is, indeed, not unlikely 
that similar conditions are the cause of the greatly lessened yield 
in the cranberry crop and other plant industries reported from some 
deposits in this country. 
For reasons such as these, the writer feels justified in the opinion 
that a preliminary-survey method based upon qualitative as well as 
quantitative differences of peat materials, which determines their 
serial position in the profile structure of a deposit and their depth 
relation and condition of disintegration and which examines the 
character of the underlying mineral substratum and the nature 
of its ground water, would offer data which might- be of general 
interest to various lines of peat utilization and would permit an esti- 
mate of the probable difficulties or tendencies making for failure. 
It would prove a more reliable means of arriving at the practical 
value of peat lands for an undertaking that faces agricultural or in- 
dustrial utilization, or a combination of both, and it would avoid 
the discrediting of interests which desire to utilize peat materials for 
technical and commercial purposes, for bacterial inoculation, as a 
filler with other fertilizer substances, as a stock-feed ingredient, as 
fiber, and in other specific ways. It has been the experience in 
Europe, and undoubtedly in this country as well, that, no matter 
how excellent the results for a time, certain field conditions qualify 
the manner and methods of utilization, while the use of some types 
of peat material introduces sources of failure. Prudence is the more 
