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FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY—THIRD ANNUAL REPORT. 
UTILIZATION OF PEAT. 
Peat can be and has been put to a remarkable variety of uses, 
ranging all the way from its use in place as a soil for growing 
crop’s in, to the extraction of ammonia, alcohol, and other products 
from it by complicated chemical processes. Some of its uses are 
based on its physical properties, some on chemical properties, and 
some on both. New ways of using it are frequently discovered, 
but those which have not passed beyond the experimental stage 
hardly need to be mentioned here. The more important uses to 
which peat is put after being removed from the place where it is 
formed may be classified as follows: 
Based on physical properties 
Non-conductor of heat or sound 
Fiber for paper, pasteboard, etc. 
Pdocks for paving and building purposes. 
Based on chemical properties 
Preservative 
Source of dye, ammonia, alcohol, etc. 
Fuel 
Air-dried 
Pressed 
Coke 
Gas 
Based on both physical and chemical properties 
Absorbent and disinfectant 
Fertilizer 
Fertilizer filler. 
All these uses have been discussed at considerable length in 
several recent state and government publications, particularly those 
on the peat of Maine, New York, New Jersey and Michigan (see 
bibliography), which can be obtained without much trouble by any. 
one who is sufficiently interested; and it is hardly worth while to 
repeat much of what has already been said on the subject. The 
uses of peat which are likely to be of most interest to the people 
of Florida at the present time or in the near future are as fiber, fuel, 
fertilizer filler, and agricultural soil. 
Peat has not been used very extensively for fiber in this country 
as yet, but there are in Florida, especially in the saw-grass marshes, 
vast quantities of coarse fibrous peat which probably cannot readily 
be pressed into briquettes for fuel or ground up for fertilizer filler, 
but ought to be well adapted for non-conducting material or the 
manufacture of pasteboard and similar substances. 
The simplest use of peat as fuel consists in merely digging it 
out in lumps or blocks with a spade and exposing it to sun and wind 
