TE would be burning peat conducting a series of experiments along the same line, and with a considerable degree of success. Canada has special reason to be interested in the possibility the bog it has from eighty of a substitute fuel, for while she has to ninety per cent of water in it, and to dry out to less than twenty-five per cent has been the long-standing difficulty of the peat-fuel producers. They have been experimenting, in both the United States and Canada, for several years, and now, after many failures and half-successes, they have pretty nearly solved the problem. Recent investigations have been conducted chiefly under government auspices. The United States Geological Survey is making a thorough study of the peat resources of various states, in the hope that a practical fuel may be found that will be at least a partial substitute for coal. In Canada the Mines Department of the Federal government has for the past two or three years been immense coal deposits they are at the extreme east and the extreme west, leaving the middle provinces largely dependent, for both domestic and industrial fuel, upon the American supply. At the same. time, she has great stretches of peat bog, and the utilization of these is therefore a thing most practical and desirable. In 1909 a demonstration plant was established at Alfred, Ontario, forty miles from Ottawa, where there is an immense peat bog of several hundred acres, averaging eight feet in depth. At the same time a fuel testing station, equipped with modern machinery and appliances, was built in Ottawa. Both works were opened in the early part of the following year, and for two summers peat-fuel has been made at the Alfred plant and tested at the station in Ottawa. The purpose was, not to initiate a peat-fuel industry on a commercial scale, but merely to demonstrate the suitability of the European methods to conditions in America, and to show that a good and serviceable fuel from the numerous bog-lands is entirely possible. One of the wrong theories on which some of the earlier experiments were based was that the moisture could be taken out of the peat by pressure. The spongy nature of the bogs suggested the idea that they held the water much as sponges do, and that, like sponges, their raw material could be squeezed dry. But it was found that there was a very great difference: peat holds water not as a sop but as a very part and parcel of its make. up. Pressing it dry had to be abandoned. ers. In 1911 the cost of transportation and distribution ran a little higher, and the price to private users was $3.80, admittedly a bit too high for the grade of fuel. In the face of high freight rates the process of manufacture must be somewhat cheapened before peat fuel can be used as a really economical substitute for coal. The tests of the fuel at the government station during both years have been very satisfactory. compared with coal, it was found that 1.8 tons of peat A TYPE OF PEAT EXCAVATOR. ELECTRICALLY DRIVEN. IN USE IN ONTARIO, CANADA. Next came various attempts to steamdry it. Machines that were really ingenious were fitted up, one of them comprising a revolving drum in which the powdered peat was subjected to a high steam-heated temperature. Drying it out on heated cylinders was also attempted. Good fuel was obtained from all these processes, but the cost of operation was such that none of them could be carried on economically. Air-drying was left as at once the simplest and the most successful method. Five miles of ditches were dug on the Alfred bog, to drain it, field tracks were laid, and a peat machine was installed. In the summer of 1910 peat was made during a period of fifty days, though average weather conditions will permit a manufacturing period of twice that length. In the fifty days some sixteen hundred tons of peat-fuel were produced, about half of which was sold for private use and for official testing. One ton of the manufactured fuel cost $2.25; landed in Ottawa it cost from $3.25 to $3.50, at which figures it was sold to household were equal in heat value to one ton of anthracite, and as a power producer two-and-ahalf pounds of it furnished one horsepowerhour as against one and a half pounds of soft coal. An Ottawa householder who had been accustomed to burning eleven tons of anthracite during the winter stocked fifteen tons of peat instead, and it carried him through. coal cost him $7.50 a ton, and the peat $3.25. To make as good a showing as this, however, the peat must be of number-one quality and well dried. It is best adapted to open-fire grates and cooking stoves, but if rightly used it will give very good results also in furnaces. It burns brightly and cleanly, leaving a fine ash which is of some value as a land fertilizer. The Tests were also made for producer gas. If bogs and marshes give out gas in their natural state, why should not bog peat yield a gas of some commercial value? A retorting plant was equipped at the Ottawa fuel station and a thorough test made, with peat of seventy-five per cent moisture, chemically treated. The results were carefully tabulated, and in general they were these: peat will produce a gas of about the same calorific value as coal gas, but not economically. One ton of peat produces 8,650 cubic feet of gas, and the time required to retort it was five times more than for MORE LIGHT ON PEAT FUEL coal. As a byproduct, however, peat gas is practicable, and in Austria and Russia it is used for lighting in plants where peat coke is made. In the way of byproducts also, moss litter and peat mull have a commercial value, the latter being shipped from Holland to the United States at about sixteen dollars a ton. It is used as a fruit packing. The method of manufacture adopted at the Alfred demonstration plant is simple. The peat machine, operated by steam, is set up on the bog, and the raw peat is carried to it by a conveyor directly from the digging. It granulates, presses, and moulds the peat, and empties it out into dumping cars in the form of rough bricks. These peat bricks are then spread on the ground to dry, the rest of the process, save for an occasional turning, being left to the sun and wind. That is all there is to it. It is a matter chiefly of good out-door ventilation, for the wind is a better drying agent than the sun. But while artificial drying has been found to be impractical, machine digging is believed to be the secret of a further cheapening of cost. If the peat must be dried by simple weather process, it must be dug by some quicker and cheaper method than hand labor. A machine excavator has been made that is driven by electrical power, slices off the bog-soil and throws it, in powder form, to one side, where it partially dries and is then gathered up for the press. In this way the cost of manufacture can be reduced at least fifty cents a ton. The Canadian Mines Department has proved it by its two years' tests that bog peat can be converted into an effective substitute for coal, for both domestic and power purposes. It has found, however, that to be made economically it must be made near at hand, and the transportation to great distances of air-dried peat fuel is not recommended. What is advised instead is that plants be erected at convenient points to serve their immediate communities, it being entirely possible for a number of farmers to operate in this way and profitably to supply 749 the local markets with a home-made fuel. A plant like that at Alfred, with a capacity of some thirty tons a day, can be erected for about $7,000. That this is a practicable suggestion, so far at least as central Canada is concerned, is apparent from the fact that there are known to be in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba areas of peat bog totaling 36,000 square miles, with an estimated possible production of 28,000,000,000 tons of air-dried peat fuel. Some ten or twelve bogs in different parts of the country have been carefully examined and delimited by the government's expert, and one of these, in Simcoe County, Ontario, covers over 16,000 acres, is free of trees, and is estimated to be capable of producing 9,000,000 tons of fuel. The prairie provinces also have great areas of bog which could be developed with very great advantage to a country that needs fuel and that must otherwise bring it in from long. distances. As a matter of fact, there is enough incipient fuel in Canada's bogs and swamps to make middle provinces practically independent of the coal-dealers: what yet remains to be done as a preliminary is to put the peat-fuel process on a commercial basis by a little further cheapening. This seems now to be within reach. The government tests have been educational and demonstrative, and they are to be followed during the present year by private development on a business basis. A still newer and possibly better process of peat-fuel manufacture has been discovered in Sweden. It is a process of wet-carbonizing the peat, by which it is claimed that continuous manufacture can be carried on, independent of air-drying. The Swedish government has made an appropriation for further experimenting, and the results will be awaited in this country with interest. If Canada can dry out her bogs and burn them, as it seems likely that she will soon be able to do, it will be one of the best pieces of nature-taming up to date. And it will be a welcome antidote to the increasing coal bills that vex the ultimate consumer. E WATCHING LIFE GROW By EDWARD F. BIGELOW VEN within the egg the life actions of the embryo trout may be seen. It is a marvelous revelation of the circulation of blood that is shown by focusing upon the egg sack. The radiating fins possess a network through which, under a high power objective, the oval corpuscles are seen to rush with great speed. They gather at the lower edge of the egg sack into one great channel or river. Then this current may be readily watched as it passes to the heart, of which the two parts the auricle and the ventriclealternately contract and suggest to the observer the thought of the walking beam of a steamer. From the heart the current may be traced to the gills each chamber of which stands as a dome-shaped receptacle. Around the top on the inside rush these corpuscles in a series of pulsations synchronous with the rhythmic beating of the heart. From this heart, the blood purified and in readiness to sustain the animal is carried throughout the entire organism. To aërate the blood there must be a constant supply of oxygenated water and astonishing is the provision that nature has made for this. The director of a fish hatchery who supplied the eggs shown in the photographs gave instructions to keep a current of water on all sides of the eggs, above as well as below, and he advised that they be suspended on wire netting in a current, and the question naturally arose, How does the egg utilize this oxygenated water? The microscope explains the miracle. Within the egg is a small amount of water that is kept flowing over the gills by the steady action of the pectoral fins. These fins may be seen work |