Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel

by Samuel W. Johnson

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 20, and sometimes of 40, or more, feet. In this country it is only in low places, where streams become obstructed and form swamps, or in bays and inlets on salt water, where the flow of the tide furnishes the requisite moisture, that our peat-beds occur. If we go north-east as far as Anticosti, Labrador, or Newfoundland, we find true moors. In these regions have been found a few localities of the Heather (Calluna vulgaris), which is so conspicuous a plant on the moors of Europe, but which is wanting in the peat-beds of the United States.

In the countries above named, the weather is more uniform than here, the air is more moist, and the excessive heat of our summers is scarcely known. Such is the greater humidity of the atmosphere that the bog-mosses,—the so-called Sphagnums,—which have a wonderful avidity for moisture, (hence used for packing plants which require to be kept moist on journeys), are able to keep fresh and in growth during the entire summer. These mosses decay below, and throw out new vegetation above, and thus produce a bog, especially wherever the earth is springy. It is in this way that in those countries, moors and peat-bogs actually grow, increasing in depth and area, from year to year, and raise themselves above the level of the surrounding country.

Prof. Marsh informs the writer that he has seen in Ireland, near the north-west coast, a granite hill, capped with a peat-bed, several feet in thickness. In the Bavarian highlands similar cases have been observed, in localities where the atmosphere and the ground are kept moist enough for the growth of moss by the extraordinary prevalence of fogs. Many of the European moors rise more or less above the level of their borders towards the centre, often to a height of 10 or 20 and sometimes of 30 feet. They are hence known in Germany as high moors (Hochmoore) to distinguish from the level or dishing meadow-moors, (Wiesenmoore). The peat-producing vegetation of the former is chiefly moss and heather, of the latter coarse grasses and sedges.

In Great Britain the reclamation of a moor is usually an expensive operation, for which not only much draining, but actual cutting out and burning of the compact peat is necessary.