A PEAT BOG

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 277, 27 November 1935, Page 12

A PEAT BOG

THE SUBSTANCE DESCRIBED FIRES THAT LAST FOR YEARS. INTERESTING ROTARY ADDRESS. A peat bog was the subject of an interesting address which was delivered by Mr. James Aitken to a large and !appreciative audience at yesterday’s weekly luncheon of the Wanganui Rotary Club. The speaker described the substance known as peat, explained some of its uses and told of how on a little farm of 45 acres in Lanarkshire, Scotland, where -ie was born, there was a patch of bog which must have been 10 acres in extent. Two black, open ditches surrounded this patch, and from it a constant flow of black water emanated, flowing away to a permanent stream, the ultimate destination of which was the River Clyde. 44 Skim off four or six inches of the surface of this water and there was a layer of loose, brown material, damp, certainly, but not waterlogged,” said Mr. Aitken. 4 4 The layer below that was not so loose and not so brown, and the deeper you went the darker the colour, the more compact .the material, and the more saturated it was found to be.” Mr. Aitken described the methods employed in Scotland when removing the' substance with a spade specially made for the purpose. Care had to be exercised when removing peat, lest this soft material should crumble to pieces. This work was done at the end of June and the beginning of July, the more settled time of the year. In a favourable season the peats would be ready to handle more freely about a week later, when they would be set up on end, their tops leaning against each other. In another week or ten days, dependent on the sunshine, they would be handled again and laid out as firewood was for measurement in cords. By this time, in a good season, the peats’ would be as hard as bricks, especially those taken from well down in the bed, and exceedingly light for their size. “Peat as a fuel lias this advantage, that it does not burn out in a night,” the speaker continued. 44 In most homes where peat is used, the fire has been continuous for many years. Kake it up in the morning and give it a puff with the breath or the. bellows and it is ready for another day’s service. Grey, in ins immortal Elegy, has expressed it: ‘Even in their ashes live their wonted fires.’ One drawback attached to peat is that it is so light in its size. It cannot be taken far from where it is won without great expense. □Huck capital has been spent in au endeavour to overcome Ibis disadvantage by compressing the moist material. ‘‘One way of •condensing the peat is to tear it to pieces and allow it to dry. When it becomes two or three times as dense as its natural state it can be bagged. J. have never seen this process, but 1 should be inclined to think that it would blaze away more quickly. A much more elaborate method is made use of in Germany, where machinery is used to disintegrate the raw peat, dry it by steam heating, and then force it out through apertures into barrows to be cut into sizes before being completely dried. All this means expense and one would be inclined to think that the cost would, to a large extent, outrun the profit. “We may now look at a peat bog from a geological point. It has been thought by some writers that these bogs have always been occasioned by the destruction of forests-!. This view has no doubt been arrived at from the fact that dead forests have been found lin peat bogs. But it is equally true I that peat bogs have been found which contain no forest remains. All that i would seem to be necessary for the formation of this material is an undrained swamp, a temperate or subarctic climate, and plenty of time. In tropical climates the dead herbage is speedily and so completely changed chemically that peat is not formed, in a frigid climate the plants that enter the peat are not present, so that, as 1 have said, the latitude most favourable for the formation of peat is not too near the torrid zone or too far from it. “The peat in the celebrated bog of Allen, in the basin of the River Shannon, is said to have an average thickness of 30 feet. In the depths of a peat bed in Denmark were found weapons and tools of the Stone Age and higher up were discovered similar utensils dating back to the Bronze Age,” said the sp<mker.