s put in wet,
ground, cut with rapidly turning knives, and passed out of the machine
as a thick pulp that is cut into bricks as it comes out. It is then
stored several weeks until thoroughly dried. This is called "machine
peat," "pressed peat," or "condensed peat."

Peat is being used in many ways. (1) Air-dried peat is used for fuel
only. (2) Dry peat without a binder, or mixed with coal dust and tar or
pitch is used for the same purpose. (3) Machine peat is used for many
purposes, among them making into briquettes, peat charcoal, and peat
coke.

It has been found practical to make illuminating gas of peat, but a far
more general use is for running gas-engines and producer-gas furnaces.
This is a practical use for it, since it will conserve the coal now used
for that purpose, furnish satisfactory power without smoke or dirt,
provide cheap power in regions that have no coal mines, and lastly may
be made to yield valuable by-products: ammonia, acetic acid, paraffin,
tar, creosote, and wood-alcohol. If all the peat in the United States
could be used in producer-gas engines the ammonia yielded would alone
have a value of $36,000,000,000.

Peat is also used for packing material, as a fertilizer, for
manufacturing paper, for coarse cloth and mattress filling. By mixing
wet machine peat with cement it may be made into blocks for paving and
other construction work. The most promising uses are for fuel, as
bedding for stock, as a disinfectant, in briquettes for burning lime,
brick, and pottery, in which it is finding a large use, and for which it
is said to be particularly well fitted; and most satisfactory of all,
its use in gas-producer engines. In Florida an immense plant is being
built to manufacture electric power, using air-dried peat as fuel, the
power to be transmitted to Jacksonville.

Machine peat is supposed to have sixty-five per cent. the value of the
same weight of Pocahontas coal, but on account of the lack of waste in
peat its real value is higher than would appear from the comparison.
From two to two and a half pounds will produce one horse-power per hour
in gas-producer engines. By this estimate, we can see that the peat beds
of this country, if properly used, may be largely employed, either now
or in the future, as a substitute for the vanishing coal.

NATURAL GAS

Of all the fuels, natural gas may be said to be the ideal one. Coming
from the ground, it is piped a greater or less distance and distrib