PRELIMINARY REPORT ON PEAT.

weather the moisture content of the peat will diminish to 25% in about two weeks.
It is then taken up from the ground and stored under shelter until wanted for grinding. After grinding to a coarse powder it is passed through the drier, which consists of an iron tube about 40 feet long and 5 feet in diameter, slightly inclined, and kept slowly rotating by suitable machinery, while the flames of a furnace are conducted through it. The damp freshly-ground peat is poured in at the upper end, and in half an hour or less comes out at the lower end with less than io% of moisture (which is the maximum accepted by the fertilizer manufacturers). The driers most commonly used have only a single tube, but Mr. Ranson has lately found many advantages in using one with an inner and outer tube, which makes the gases from the furnace traverse the whole length of the drier twice, and keeps the outer shell from becoming red-hot as it usually does in the single-tube apparatus.
Ground peat as a filler has several advantages over other substances used to dilute commercial fertilizers, such as sand, ground slag, coal waste, etc., because it is organic matter, and cannot injure the soil as some of these other substances do, and it contains nitrogen, a valuable plant food. But much of this nitrogen is in such combinations that it does not become available to plants until after a few years of weathering, and in many states there are legal obstacles in the way of counting such nitrogen in the guaranteed analysis of fertilizers.
Another circumstance which tends to retard the use of peat as a source of nitrogen, is the comparatively recent discovery of a cheap method of extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere and combining it with calcium carbide to form calcium cyanamide, which has proved to a valuable fertilizing material. However, it is possible by chemical processes to separate nitrogen from peat in a form available to plants, and it is altogether probable that future inventions and improvements will cheapen these processes so that peat nitrogen can compete successfully with that derived from other sources.
For a more elaborate discussion of the use of peat as a fertilizing material see the articles by Haskins, cited in the bibliography.

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