T2 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
No. 6.— Notes of Experiments in which Buckwheat Plants 
were watered with Solutions of Peat in Alkalies. By 
I’. H. Storer, Professor of Agricultural Chemistry. 
In the hope of adding something to the existing stock of knowledge 
as to the causes of the well-known beneficial action of alkalies upon 
peat in composts, I have tried a few experiments to test the question 
whether solutions of peat in alkalies have any direct or immediate 
power of supplying plants with nitrogenous food. To this end solu- 
tions of “crude peat” and of “leached peat” were prepared as 
follows: A quantity of air-dried peat from the Bussey Farm was 
divided into two parts; one part was boiled repeatedly with fresh 
portions of dilute chlorhydric acid, prepared by mixing one volume of 
the strong commercial acid with one volume of rain-water, and was 
afterwards washed thoroughly with rain-water, and allowed to become 
completely dry in the glass-house in which the culture experiments 
were to be made. A considerable quantity of each of the peats was 
finely powdered, so that the portions weighed out for the experiments 
were known to be homogeneous. 
I. 10 grammes of the air-dried leached peat were boiled for three 
quarters of an hour in one and a half litres of water, in which 0.375 
grm. of triphosphate of potash had previously been dissolved. 
II. 10 grms. of the original unleached (so called, crude) peat 
were boiled as above with one and a half litres of the solution of phos- 
phate of potash. 
III. 10 grms. of the crude peat were boiled, as above, with one 
and a half litres of water in which 0.375 grm. of anhydrous carbonate 
of soda had previously been dissolved. 
IV. 10 grms. of the leached peat were boiled, as above, with 
carbonate of soda. 
The solutions were filtered into large wash-bottles, such as chemists 
use, and kept in the glass-house. Solutions Nos. 1 and 2 were of a 
light yellow color, while Nos. 3 and 4 were very dark, 7.e. almost or 
quite black. In this instance, as in so many others, the phosphate of 
potash manifestly acts as a weak alkali, — one very much weaker than 
the carbonate of soda. It is to be observed that the long-continued 
boiling with the alkaline solutions would expel from the peat any 
