108 TORBITE AND ITS USES. 
coal measures will be exhausted at no very distant period. Our stock 
of coal, excluding all that lies at a greater depth than 4,000ft., has been 
estimated at 83,544,000,000 tons. In 1863 the consumption reached 
86,300,000 tons, and the average rate of increase for the last ten years has 
been two millions of tons a year. Thus, supposing our stock to have 
been correctly estimated, in less than 100 years our coal will be ex- 
hausted. Fortunately, however, nature has not left us dependent on our 
coal measures alone, but has also given us our bogs. 
Peat, it is well known, possesses many most valuable properties as a 
raw material for fuel, but the attempts hitherto made to utilize peat on 
a large scale have proved failures, owing to the difficulty of dealing 
with a substance exceedingly bulky, very loose, and holding from 75 to 
85 per cent of water. 
To separate the water and to condense and mould the peat into con- 
venient sizes at a cost sufficiently low to render it commercially available 
as fuel, is a problem which has baffled the efforts of many operators. In 
most instances, compression has been applied for the purpose of impart- 
ing the requisite degree of of solidity, by means of powerful hydraulic 
presses or other machinery. In the process adopted by Messrs. Gwynne 
and Mr. C. Hodgson, the peat is first dried and powdered, and then 
pressed into blocks ; but the action of compression is purely mechanical, 
and though it imparts great compactness by bringing the particles of 
the peat into close contiguity, it does not really solidify the substance, 
since on being exposed to heat, it resumes its original form and crumbles 
to pieces. Fuel thus prepared is totally incapable of resisting the action 
of a blast or even of a moderate draft, and though Mr. Hodgson still 
carries on the manufacture of fuel by his process, the consumption is 
very limited. 
Acccording to Mr. Cobbold's mode of treatment the peat is immersed 
in water for the purpose of separating the fibre from the more decom- 
posed matter, and the water is afterwards got rid of either by simple 
evaporation or by means of centrifugal power ; but though by this 
means a very dense fuel is obtained, the separation of the fibre deprives 
the fuel of coherency, besides which the process is laborious and costly. 
Attempts have also been made in Ireland to utilize peat by manufac- 
turing it solely for the sake of its chemical products. Many valuable 
products have thus been obtained, from which even paraffin candles 
have been made, but the cost far exceeded the market value. 
But such attempts have not been altogether in vain, inasmuch as the 
experience thus gained in the treatment of peat has proved of great 
value. To know what will not do is a great step towards knowing what 
will do ; and the more recent patents show, almost in the order of their 
dates, the slow but steady progress that has been made until one arrives 
at the system of manufacture recently inspected by the writer at 
Horwlch : according to this system mechanical compression in any 
manner is studiously avoided, being not only costly but also ineffectual. 
