al cutting is therefore best for stratified
peat.

_System employed in East Friesland._--In raising peat, great waste both
of labor and of fuel may easily occur as the result of random and
unsystematic methods of working. For this reason, the mode of cutting
peat, followed in the extensive moors of East Friesland, is worthy of
particular description. There, the business is pursued systematically on
a plan, which, it is claimed, long experience[17] has developed to such
perfection that the utmost economy of time and labor is attained. The
cost of producing marketable peat in East Friesland in 1860, was one
silver groschen=about 2-1/2 cents, per hundred weight; while at that
time, in Bavaria, the hundred weight cost three times as much when fit
for market; and this, notwithstanding living and labor are much cheaper
in the latter country.

The method to be described, presupposes that the workmen are not
hindered by water, which, in most cases, can be easily removed from the
high-moors of the region. The peat is worked in long stretches of 10
feet in width, and 100 to 1000 paces in length: each stretch or plot is
excavated at once to a considerable depth and to its full width. Each
successive year the excavation is widened by 10 feet, its length
remaining the same. Sometimes, unusual demand leads to more rapid
working; but the width of 10 feet is adhered to for each cutting, and,
on account of the labor of carrying the peats, it is preferred to extend
the length rather than the width.

Assuming that the peat bed has been opened by a previous cutting, to the
depth of 5-1/2 feet, and the surface muck and light peat, 1-1/2 feet
thick, have been thrown into the excavation of the year before--a new
plot is worked by five men as follows.

One man, the "Bunker," removes from the surface, about two inches of
peat, disintegrated by the winter's frost, throwing it into last year's
ditch.

Following him, come two "Diggers," of whom one stands on the surface of
the peat, and with a heavy, long handled tool, cuts out the sides and
end of the blocks, which are about seventeen by five inches; while the
other stands in the ditch, and by horizontal thrusts of a light, sharp
spade, removes the sods, each of five and a half inches thickness, and
places them on a small board near by. Each block of peat has the
dimensions of one fourth of a cubic foot, and weighs about 13 pounds.
Two good workmen will raise 25 such peats, or 6-1/4 cubic f