hat has been acquired in Europe, during the
last twenty-five years, in regard to the important subject of which it
treats.

The employment of peat as an amendment and absorbent for agricultural
purposes has proved to be of great advantage in New-England farming.

It is not to be doubted, that, as fuel, it will be even more valuable
than as a fertilizer. Our peat-beds, while they do not occupy so much
territory as to be an impediment and a reproach to our country, as they
have been to Ireland, are yet so abundant and so widely
distributed--occurring from the Atlantic to the Missouri, along and
above the 40th parallel, and appearing on our Eastern Coast at least as
far South as North Carolina[1]--as to present, at numberless points,
material, which, sooner or later, will serve us most usefully when other
fuel has become scarce and costly.

The high prices which coal and wood have commanded for several years
back have directed attention to peat fuel; and, such is the adventurous
character of American enterprise, it cannot be doubted that we shall
rapidly develop and improve the machinery for producing it. As has
always been the case, we shall waste a vast deal of time and money in
contriving machines that violate every principle of mechanism and of
economy; but the results of European invention furnish a safe basis from
which to set out, and we have among us the genius and the patience that
shall work out the perfect method.

It may well be urged that a good degree of caution is advisable in
entering upon the peat enterprise. In this country we have exhaustless
mines of the best coal, which can be afforded at a very low rate, with
which other fuel must compete. In Germany, where the best methods of
working peat have originated, fuel is more costly than here; and a
universal and intense economy there prevails, of which we, as a people,
have no conception.

If, as the Germans themselves admit, the peat question there is still a
nice one as regards the test of dollars and cents, it is obvious, that,
for a time, we must "hasten slowly." It is circumstances that make peat,
and gold as well, remunerative or otherwise; and these must be well
considered in each individual case. Peat is the name for a material that
varies extremely in its quality, and this quality should be investigated
carefully before going to work upon general deductions.

In my account of the various processes for working peat by machinery,
such data as