298 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY THIRD ANNUAL REPORT.
ANALYSES OF FLORIDA PEAT SAMPLES.
The subjoined table shows the percentage of water, mineral matter, volatile combustible matter, fixed carbon, sulphur, and (in a few cases) nitrogen, and the fuel value, of the samples of Florida peat collected by the writer in 19o8-191o and analyzed in the peat laboratory of the U. S. Geological Survey at Pittsburgh, Pa., mostly under the direction of Dr. F. M. Stanton.
In the number assigned to each sample the figures before the decimal point indicate the consecutive number of the locality, the first figure after the decimal point the number of the hole from which the sample was taken, and the last figure the number of the sample from that hole. In most cases only one sample from each swamp or bog was taken, on account of the limited time available. For the same reason nearly half the samples were dugout by hand. from a depthi of about a foot. The deeper ones were taken with a sampling instrument devised by Dr. Chas. A. Davis, consisting of a number of sections of half-inch iron pipe which could be screwed together, one of them with a short transverse handle at one end, and a brass cylinder nearly an inch in diameter and about nine inches long, which could be screwed to the pipes and pushed down to any desired depth, and then filled with peat from that depth by an ingenious mechanism. This cylinder had to be filled a good many times to obtain a sufficient quantity of peat for analysis, and in practice each sample was made up from several taken from the same depth within a few feet of each other.
The next column after the name of the locality gives the depth from which the sample was taken, and the last column on the first page the maximum depth of peat found in each deposit. In a few cases where this depth was given me by other persons the figures are put in parentheses.
The moisture percentage is taken from air-dry samples, and the other determinations were made after the water was eliminated by heating slightly above the boiling point (not enough to decompose or volatilize the peat). The ash was not analyzed, but it is probably chiefly silica in most cases, though in the samples from Panasoffkee, Helena Run, and the south end of the Everglades it must be mostly lime. The reason for determining the sulphur (which is done more generally for coal than for peat) is that an excess of it would have a corrosive effect on thae iron parts of fire-boxes, and might also be objectionable if the peat was made into illuminating gas. The percentage of nitrogen gives some: indication of the value of the peat for agricultural purposes.