ON TOEBITE AND ITS USES. 
427 
every respect, more abundant and more readily accessible. The consumption of coal is so 
enormous and goes on annually increasing at such a rate, that for some time past, seri¬ 
ous apprehensions have been entertained that our coal-measures will be exhausted at no 
very distant period. Our stock of coal, excluding all that lies at a greater depth than 
4000 feet, 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 exhausted. 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 convenient 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 imparting the requisite degree of solidity, by means of powerful hy¬ 
draulic 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 draught; and though Mr.Hodgson still carries on the manufacture of fuel by 
his process, the consumption is very limited. 
According to Mr. Cobbold’s mode of treatment the peat is immersed in water for the 
purpose of separating the fibre from the more decomposed matter, and the water is after¬ 
wards 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 manufacturing 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 Horwich : ac¬ 
cording to this system mechanical compression in any manner is studiously avoided, being 
not only costly but also inffectual. Advantage has, on the contrary, been taken of the 
natural property of peat, suitably prepared, of contracting as it parts with its moisture 
and becoming perfectly solid and cohesive. The means of separating the water suspended 
in the peat have, too, been carefully perfected. The necessity of dealing with, and getting 
rid of, such a large proportion of water has been a standing difficulty from the first, and 
the cause of excessive expenditure. At Horwich the problem has been carefully studied, 
and the difficulties appear to have been successfully overcome. Until a mode of artifi¬ 
cially drying peat rapidly and economically had been worked out, air-drying was neces¬ 
sarily resorted to ; and where limited quantities of fuel—say about 100 tons a year— 
only are required to be made, air-drying may suffice, but for large quantities it would be, 
in our fickle climate, too uncertain a process to be depended on, and for seven months in 
the year it would not be available at all. 
According to the system matured and established at Horwich, the peat, as it comes 
from the bog, is thrown into a mill, expressly constructed, by which it is reduced to a 
homogeneous pulpy consistency. The pulp is conveyed, by means of an endless band, 
to the moulding machine, in which, while it travels, it is formed into a slab and cut into 
blocks of any required size. The blocks are delivered by a self-acting process on a 
band, -which conveys them into a drying chamber, through which they travel forwards 
and backwards on a series of endless bands at a fixed rate of speed, exposed all the time 
to the action of a current of heated air. The travelling-bands are so arranged that the 
blocks of peat are delivered from one to the other consecutively, and are by the same 
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