I have been able to find have been given as to cost of
production. These data are however very imperfect, and not altogether
trustworthy, in direct application to American conditions. The cheapness
of labor in Europe is an item to our disadvantage in interpreting
foreign estimates. I incline to the belief that this is more than offset
among us by the quality of our labor, by the energy of our
administration, by the efficiency of our overseeing, and, especially, by
our greater skill in the adaptation of mechanical appliances. While
counselling caution, I also recommend enterprise in developing our
resources in this important particular; knowing full well, however, that
what I can say in its favor will scarcely add to the impulse already
apparent among my countrymen.

SAMUEL W. JOHNSON.

_Sheffield Scientific School_,}
_Yale College, June, 1866._ }

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The great Dismal Swamp is a grand peat bog, and doubtless other of
the swamps of the coast, as far south as Florida and the Gulf, are of
the same character.

PART I.

THE ORIGIN, VARIETIES, AND CHEMICAL CHARACTERS
OF PEAT.

1. _What is Peat?_

By the general term Peat, we understand the organic matter or vegetable
soil of bogs, swamps, beaver-meadows and salt-marshes.

It consists of substances that have resulted from the decay of many
generations of aquatic or marsh plants, as mosses, sedges, coarse
grasses, and a great variety of shrubs, mixed with more or less mineral
substances, derived from these plants, or in many cases blown or washed
in from the surrounding lands.

2. _The conditions under which Peat is formed._

In this country the production of Peat from fallen and decaying plants,
depends upon the presence of so much water as to cover or saturate the
vegetable matters, and thereby hinder the full access of air. Saturation
with water also has the effect to maintain the decaying matters at a
low temperature, and by these two causes in combination, the process of
decay is made to proceed with great slowness, and the solid products of
such slow decay, are compounds that themselves resist decay, and hence
they accumulate.

In the United States there appears to be nothing like the extensive
_moors_ or _heaths_, that abound in Ireland, Scotland, the north of
England, North Germany, Holland, and the elevated plains of Bavaria,
which are mostly level or gently sloping tracts of country, covered with
peat or turf to a depth often of 2