raining is unnecessary, the
water drying away in summer enough to admit of easy working.

In some methods of preparing or condensing peat by machinery, it is best
or even needful to drain and air-dry the peat, preliminary to working.
By draining, the peat settles, especially on the borders of the ditches,
several inches, or even feet, according to its nature and depth. It thus
becomes capable of bearing teams and machinery, and its density is very
considerably augmented.

10.--_The Cutting of Peat._--a. _Preparations._

In preparing to raise peat fuel from the bog, the surface material,
which from the action of frost and sun has been pulverized to "muck," or
which otherwise is full of roots and undecomposed matters, must be
removed usually to the depth of 12 to 18 inches. It is only those
portions of the peat which have never frozen nor become dry, and are
free from coarse fibers of recent vegetation, that can be cut for fuel.

Peat fuel must be brought into the form of blocks or masses of such size
and shape as to adapt them to use in our common stoves and furnaces.
Commonly, the peat is of such consistence in its native bed, that it may
be cut out with a spade or appropriate tool into blocks having more or
less coherence. Sometimes it is needful to take away the surplus water
from the bog, and allow the peat to settle and drain a while before it
can be cut to advantage.

When a bog is to be opened, a deep ditch is run from an outlet or lowest
point a short distance into the peat bed, and the working goes on from
the banks of this ditch. It is important that system be followed in
raising the peat, or there will be great waste of fuel and of labor.

If, as often happens, the peat is so soft in the wet season as to break
on the vertical walls of a ditch and fill it, at the same time
dislocating the mass and spoiling it for cutting, it is best to carry
down the ditch in terraces, making it wide above and narrow at the
bottom.

b. _Cutting by hand._

The simplest mode of procedure, consists in laying off a "field" or plot
of, say 20 feet square, and making vertical cuts with a sharp spade
three or four inches deep from end to end in parallel lines, as far
apart as it is proposed to make the breadth of the peats or sods,
usually four to five inches. Then, the field is cut in a similar manner
in lines at right angles to the first, and at a distance that shall be
the length of the peats, say 18 to 20 inches. Finally,