194 
The Ohio Naturalist. 
[Vol. XI, No. 1, 
During the past summer the writer was directed to obtain for 
the Ohio State Geological Survey an estimate of the extent and 
value of the bog and marshland in Ohio, to determine the depth 
of these vegetable accumulations, the general physical and chem- 
ical characters of the deposits, and to study them with a view to 
their commercial and agricultural utilization. 
The uses of peat are many. There has recently been shown a 
renewed interest in the problem of peat utilization. In Europe 
this question receives the most careful and exhaustive study by 
trained specialists. Reports from Europe indicate the success of 
various new processes, and it is therefore a matter of the greatest 
importance to determine the extent of our own peat resources, the 
conservation of which should be second to none of the other 
economic sources of wealth. Peat can be employed as packing 
material, bedding, absorbent, fertilizer; as insulating material, 
for paper pulp and cardboard; in woven fabrics, artificial wood, 
paving and building blocks, for mattresses. There are certain 
chemical by-products derived from the distillation of peat as 
alcohol, ammonium sulphate, nitrates, and various dyes, the 
demand for which is steadily increasing. An interesting chapter 
in peat utilization is that of peat as fuel, power or producer gas, 
and coke. Many of our peat lands make our most productive 
agricultural soils when properly reclaimed. The most interesting 
studies are connected with the agricultural possibilities of peat 
soils; the nutritive value of peat to cereals and legumes, the 
character and variety of crops and garden plants which may be 
profitably cultivated on peat land; the sterility and the diseases 
of some of these soils; the nature of functional and structural 
responses in plants to such soils, and many other problems. This 
is a period of ‘‘intensive” agriculture, of investigation and dis- 
covery, and attention must sooner or later be turned towards our 
immense peat deposits. 
The plants concerned in the formation and development of 
bogs and marshlands bear a relation of the utmost importance 
with reference to the purity, character, thermal, and physiolog- 
ical value of peat soils. The bearing of a floristic study upon the 
distribution of bog and marsh plants is also of considerable eco- 
logical and physiological interest. The aim has been, therefore, 
not only to present a list of the plants found in the various areas 
visited, but to show also the natural association of the plants into 
societies, and the order in which development and succession of 
plants in bogs proceeds. Moreover, the present bog and marsh 
plant societies are being destroyed so rapidly that some historical 
record is indeed of primary importance. In almost all places the 
work of man inaugurated conditions by cutting, clearing, fire, 
ditching, pasturing, and cultivation, which have destroyed much 
of the original flora of Ohio, and hence in many places a mixture 
