MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
101 
it seems to have been attacked with great earnestness, because of the desira- 
bility and value of the product. Most encouraging reports of its complete 
solution on a commercial basis reach us from Russia and Germany, where 
the Ziegler process of making peat coke seems to have gone beyond the 
experimental stage. 
To sum up then: In Europe, extensive and very thorough study, and a large 
number of experiments have been made, to produce an efficient and easily 
transported fuel from peat (1) By grinding and compacting, while wet, and 
drying in the air, (2) By drying artificially and briquetting in the dry state, 
(3) By taking the product of either of these processes anti heating it in ovens, 
or in closed retorts, until the volatile matter is driven off, i.e., making char- 
coal or coke of it. 
The work of development has gone farther than this, however, and men- 
tion should be made of the use of peat as a source of gas for illumination 
and power, its use in paper making, in the weaving of fabrics of various 
sorts, its extensive use as litter for stables and barns, an increasing use as 
the basis of stock food, for sanitary purposes in towns and cities, as a con- 
stituent of artificial fertilizers, and, by no means of least importance, the 
great improvement which has been made in the agriculture of the peaty 
soils by drainage and proper cultural methods, so that great areas, formerly 
considered untillable, have now become productive. 
This brief sketch of the development of the utilization of peat as fuel and 
for other purposes has been made, not only to enforce what has already been 
said by others along the same line, but also with the special purpose of urging 
upon the attention of prospective investors, or inventors, the folly of com- 
mencing at the very beginning in this country, and trying to develop new 
processes and new machinery for handling peat, for any purpose, until a 
careful study has been made of the processes and machines which have 
been tried and are now in use in Europe. These may be faulty, and some 
of them admittedly are so, but they represent much careful and exhaustive 
study of the problems involved, and the expenditure of much time and more 
money, as well -as the sum of the experience of practical men, actually work- 
ing on the material on a commercial basis, and to ignore this storehouse of 
experience and knowledge, is to handicap the development of our peat re- 
sources beyond the limit of tolerance. That this has, in a measure, been 
done, however, is beyond question, and not a few of the failures of the at- 
tempts which have been made in this state to establish peat fuel plants 
may be directly attributed to this cause. 
The amount of peat available for various purposes in this state is un- 
doubtedly very great : as yet, in fact, we have little basis for even an approxi- 
mate estimate of the quantity, but, assuming that even half of the swamp 
lands of the country are covered by peat suitable for fuel, and that this has 
an average depth of ten feet, the amount of fuel alone which is stored up 
in this way, amounts to billions of tons. 
Moreover, these deposits of peat are widely distributed over the greater 
part of the eastern half of the continent, and, doubtless, over the moister 
parts of thp western half as well, and there are notably widely-spread deposits 
in those regions so remote from supplies of coal, that the price of this com- 
modity is sufficiently high to tempt capital to develop the peat, if it can 
only be shown that it is a practicable thing to do. 
The history of the attempts at such developments, however, is not en- 
couraging, when one goes over the field and enumerates the plants which 
have been built, run for a brief period, and then closed down indefinitely, 
