104 
TENTH REPORT, 
centers to make the demand for such development large enough to warrant 
an expenditure of the capital necessary to establish plants for these purposes. 
The advantage of these forms of working up peat deposits, over those 
looking to transforming them into crude forms of fuel are obvious, but, 
since they are untried as yet, or only in the early stages of development 
abroad, it will be necessary to proceed carefully through experimental stages 
before larger expansion can be expected. 
Of the possibilities of a peat coke, or charcoal industry, there is a large 
opportunity opening up extended vistas, which, seemingly, have no limits, 
since the demand for such a product as the coke must constantly increase, 
as the rapidly diminishing hard-wood forests are drawn on more and more 
for materials which must cause a decrease in the supply of wood charcoal, 
now used so extensively for metallurgical operations, and for which the 
peat coke is especially adapted. 
It is remarkable that some of the more progressive iron mining companies, 
owning as they do, extensive tracts of swamp land, covered by good peat, 
in Northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, have not as yet erected 
experimental unit plants and begun the work which some of their progressive 
men already realize must soon be done. That they are making preliminary 
enquiries and watching the foreign peat coke developments is known, and 
at any time we may learn of the beginnings of an enterprise of this sort in 
our northern peat bogs. 
In a small way, peat charcoal has been made in Connecticut, experimental 
work is being conducted in Massachusetts, and, although the success of these 
experiments has not been made public, they are the forerunners of an attempt 
to grasp a tempting opportunity to supply a large demand for a good sub- 
stitute for wood charcoal, for domestic uses, now a scarce article. It is to 
be hoped that, before long, we may learn that whatever difficulties have 
been encountered in the e experiments are overcome, and the making of 
peat charcoal is a commercial success. 
Much has been written of the possibilities of peat as a source of gas for 
illumination and power purposes, especially the latter, and again it is true 
that most of the work which actually has been done has been carried on 
abroad, with the notable exception of the recent experiments on peat as a 
source of gas in the producer gas engine, which were made by the Technologic 
Branch of the U. S. Geological Survey in its Fuel Testing Plant at St. Louis, 
and which were extended at the Jamestown Exposition. These trials gave 
highly interesting and significant results, and, if confirmed by later work 
on a more extensive scale, will open up much greater opportunities for the 
use of peat fuel than any other which has been considered, since, used in 
this way, the peat has nearly the value of coal, as the gas procured from it 
was equal to that given off by equal weights of coal of certain grades, and 
as efficient in producing power. 
As the producer gas engine is being rapidly improved in various ways, and 
increased in size and power, and is also almost as rapidly displacing the 
steam engine as the motive power for many industries, this opportunity 
for peat utilization is not to be under-estimated, and its possibilities to the 
prospective peat fuel manufactures are very great, because, according to 
present lights at least, the peat, to be successfully used in the producer gas 
engine, must be machined and dried. 
In considering the neglected opportunities which are offered by peat as a 
fuel, that presented to the small manufacturer by any of the numerous peat 
bogs which lie beside the railroads throughout a large part of our northern 
