feet apart, and a series of smaller crossditches, the depth and closeness of the latter depending upon the character of the bog. Its surface cleared of debris and growing moss, and leveled, the bog is ready for working. The mass of red

A TYPICAL PEAT-BOG.

dish-black soil has first to be broken up in such manner as to expose it to the action of the air, an ordinary farm harrow sometimes serving for the purpose. A layer of from one to two inches, thus loosened, air-dries under favorable circumstances in a few hours, reducing its moisture from eighty to forty per cent. In this partly dried condition it is ready for the final processes, and is gathered up, loaded on tram-cars, and taken to the factory.

With forty per cent of water, peat is not yet suitable for fuel. The drying process must be carried still further, and the loose particles must be bound together in a more compact and transportable form. At this point appears the real problem of peat-fuel production.

The removal of the last thirty or forty per cent of water is the rock on which producers have inevitably wrecked. Following Nature's example, it has been thought that this can be done by heavy pressure; but, after countless attempts, it has been found that what Nature can do very efficiently in a hundred or a thousand years cannot be done artificially in a few hours. Experiments with pulverized peat in hydraulic presses capable of a pressure of several tons per square inch, have shown that the greatest reduction thus obtainable is from eighty to sixty-three per cent of water. Extensive operations in Germany, in which every conceivable theory was given a thorough trial, were no more successful. Drying by pressure seems right in theory, but is in fact impracticable.

The surest method is that of air-drying, but it necessitates too large space and is too greatly dependent upon weather conditions. A process that largely overcomes these difficulties, however, has been found successful, on at least a

small scale. The crude peat is conveyed directly from the bog to the factory, and is there thoroughly broken up and macerated, then moulded into bricks about thirty inches long and laid on slatted pallets, which are passed outdoors again and stacked eight tiers high in drying-frames. These frames are skeleton, and admit the air and sun on all sides. Drying thus, much as building bricks are dried, the peat blocks are greatly condensed, and reduced in moisture from eighty to about thirty per cent. In handling, they break into irregular pieces, as coal, and in this form are ready for use.

A process which is fairly claimed to have demonstrated the practicability of peat-fuel production, is now in use in three of the leading peat-fields in Ontario, where excellent fuel is being produced on a commercially profitable basis, though as yet in limited quantities. The process, from its beginning, represents probably the most advanced ideas in peat manufacture. By this method the crude peat is removed from the bog, which has been carefully drained and leveled, by an electrically driven excavating machine, which travels slowly up and down one or both sides of the area under removal. A series of cutting teeth, set on an endless chain, cut a thin slice of peat from the edge of the strip, and elevate it to the top and opposite side of the machine, where a fast-revolving paddlewheel divides it into particles and and showers it over the surface of the bog thirty feet away. A 10-horse-power mo

chine, fed through a hopper, breaks up the partially dried peat, thus destroying its minute plant cells, and empties it out as a damp powder, which then passes on to the dryer, a heated cylinder thirty feet long and three feet in diameter. The mass of peat is twenty minutes in passing through this cylinder, during which time it is agitated by swiftly moving lifters; and when it is discharged at the opposite end, it is reduced to about fifteen per cent of moisture.

The final step is shaping into marketable form. This is done in briquetting presses, by compressing punches working in dies, with a pressure of twelve tons per square inch; the peat is expelled at the rate of one hundred briquettes per minute, each two inches long and about the same in diameter. Thirteen tons of finished fuel are produced by one of these presses in a ten-hour day, at a cost of about one dollar per ton.

Another process that has been experimented with to a small extent does away with air-drying, the crude peat being dug and stacked irrespective of weather conditions. The dryers, which are fed from this stock pile at any time or season, are steam-heated instead of dry-heated, and it is claimed that by this system of steamdrying the moisture may be reduced to ten per cent or less. It has not yet, however, been commercially tested.

The manufactured peat in briquette form is of a dark brown color, sometimes showing a polish on the surface. The tar, resin, paraffine, and other oils of the natural peat, act, when warmed in the pressing process, as a binder, and tend to keep the cylindrical briquettes intact. They are apt, however, if much handled, to break, and for this reason are chiefly adapted to local market use. There is in this and other respects a great divergence in the quality of various peat fuels, according to the composition of the bog peat from which they are made, the proportions of carbon, etc., varying considerably. Peat from the bog may differ from another as coal from one mine may differ from that mined elsewhere.

In practical use the heating value of the best peat fuel is about two-thirds that of anthracite coal. It burns at first with

a short blue flame; and, when well afire, with a yellow glow and flame, giving out an intense heat. It requires very little oxygen to sustain combustion, and will keep alive for ten or twelve hours, if properly banked and draught-checked. Peat makes no clinkers, but forms considerable ash, though in a properly equipped stove every portion of the fuel is consumed. As compared with other fuels, the calorific value is as follows: anthracite coal, 1.02; bituminous coal, 1.01; peat, 0.7; wood, 0.5. Peat has an advantage over coal in a much smaller percentage of sulphur.

The chief sphere for peat fuel will always be in the home, where, for both heating and cooking purposes, it gives excellent results. Whether or not it will ever be used extensively for steam-raising, will depend upon the further progress made in its production. It has, however, been already used very satisfactorily in a number of small manufactories, and has been fairly tested for railroad use. Heavy freight trains in Russia have made hundred-mile runs with peat in their locomotives, in as good time as with coal. In a test not long ago by one of the western American roads, a sixty-mile run, consuming 4,450 pounds. of coal, was made in 2 hours 46 minutes; under precisely the same conditions, the run was made in five minutes' less time, using 5,100 pounds of peat. For railroad needs, however, the chief difficulty lies in the supply. One of the Canadian roads, whose lines traverse a vast peat area, investigated the possibility of securing a supply of fuel equal to one thousand tons per day, and found that an output of such proportions would be quite impossible by any process involving as much hand labor as those now in use.

The future progress of the industry will without doubt establish some means of producing the fuel rapidly and cheaply enough to put it on a commercial footing in the national market. Nature has supplied abundant and widely distributed material; the way to use it can hardly remain long in doubt.

Of other uses of peat besides fuel, the most common in America are as a fertilizer, and in making cardboard.

LD man Parker pushed back the little black silk skull-cap which was the symbol of his authority in the shops, sniffed scornfully, and beckoned to Cutler, his assistant, who walked across the little office and leaned over his chief's chair.

"The trouble with us, Cut," sneered the old man, with a nasty, guttural chuckle, "is that we never learned to play lawn tennis. Listen to this letter:

"Mr. Maginn played left guard on the Varsity football eleven, and was also the champion lawn tennis player and heavyweight boxer of his year-quite an unusual record in the athletic line." "

Cutler laughed in a dry, unpleasant way. "I wonder what those Indians out in the foundry will do to Willie when he goes out there with his white flannel panties on?" he said. "Have they de

cided on him?"

"Yeh," answered Parker. "He'll be here next Monday to take hold."

It had been a bitter day for Parker and his assistant when the directors of the Gray Ghost Automobile Company decided that they must have a new superintendent. The old man could remember the day when he first hung out his signJohn Parker-Wagon Maker-over the door of the little one-storied frame shop in Ridott, next to the grain elevator. Cutler was a boy then, learning his trade. They had made mighty good wagons, too. That was proved by the fact that

ten years later the firm was occupying a brick building in Liberty, the county seat, and employing eighty workmen. And there were plenty of the green Parker wagons, with the red wreath on the dash, still hauling corn to market over the dirt roads of Liberty county. Nobody talked foolishness about technical education in those days.

Then the bicycle craze came along, and Parker had been persuaded to organize a stock company and turn his big plant to the manufacture of wheels. The new stockholders had offered to make the old man President and put Cutler in as second or third Vice. But neither of them was willing.

"No," Parker told them, firmly. "Cut and I'll stay out in the shops. We know the men, and the men know us. You can get somebody else to wear the silk hats."

When the Parker "bike" presently took a high place with the trade and the big plant had to be twice enlarged to keep up with the demand, they both felt fully justified. And the directors acknowledged their debt by passing resolutions of thanks and adding a thousand dollars to the salary of each of them.

During this period a few young cubs from the technical schools were put on the pay-roll in subordinate positions. They did well enough in their fussy way, but the old chaps always looked at them patronizingly, with never a suspicion that their own place at the head of the shops was being threatened.

"Nothing like having practical men at the top," Parker said more than once, as he and Cutler, on their way home, looked back at the great row of factories behind

them. "Test-tubes and micrometers and fancy machines for findin' the maximum strain, may be all right; but they ain't nothin' like learnin' a thing by doin' it, eh Cut ?"

Then they would turn in together at the little saloon on the corner; and Casey, the old bartender with the long, white beard, would set a couple of beers on the bar without a word spoken.

"To the works and their daddy!" Cutler would whisper, as he emptied his glass.

"To the factory and its godfather!" Parker would answer, wiping the foam from his shaggy, gray moustache.

It was a foolish little ceremony the two went through two or three times a week.

A man may never feel a passion for a woman, and yet know what it is to be in love. And "wedded to his business" is occasionally-more than a figure of

speech.

When destiny punctured the inflated tire of the bicycle business, the Parker company was a trifle slow in finding itself. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that the two men in the active management of the factory were reluctant to admit the facts. A good many of the old stockholders had died or retired, and there were several youngsters on the board of directors. They raised the question of making automobiles promptly enough, but Parker and Cutler dodged it. Meanwhile they were both trying to get a thorough understanding of the new

craze.

"Chassis and tonneau and garage and chauffeur!" Cutler burst out complainingly one day. "My Lord! It'd take a dago to know what it's all about."

"Don't worry, Cut," Parker put in, consolingly. "It'll never go in this country."

But it did "go," and the whole bottom dropped out of the bicycle industry. Presently a special meeting of the stockholders was called to consider the situation. Parker had paid little attention to the financial department of the business. He and his friends were outvoted at the meeting, and, much against his will, the old man was made Chairman of the Board

of Directors, and Cutler was gracefully shelved under the title of First VicePresident.

Then the new managers wrote to the presidents of half a dozen great technical schools, asking them to recommend a general superintendent for the Gray Ghost Automobile Company. They had even changed the name of the old company. That was the last and most cutting stroke of all.

Both Parker and Cutler felt as does a mother when her only son calmly relegates her to the rear and puts in first place a younger and fresher woman. Consequently, when the young fellows in control of the company did old Parker the tardy courtesy of consulting him as to which of the engineers recommended for the position should be made General Superintendent, they found him in no mood to look at the situation fairly. And when, over his sullen protest, they selected "Billy" Maginn, Cornell, '98, for the post, the old man made small effort to conceal how sore he felt. Maginn was said to be an expert in internal-combustion motors and to have had experience in shop practice and in machine design; but what aroused Parker's scorn was his record as a lawn tennis champion.

"I can't help wonderin', Cut," he repeated to his assistant, "what Mike Nagle and that gang of devils in the foundry'll do to Willie and his white panties?"

Parker and Cutler were far too loval to the business and far too honorable, personally, to do anything consciously, which would make the place of the new superintendent any harder than it must necessarily be. But, in some occult way, the feeling of bitterness and resentment which filled them both spread rapidly through the shops; and when "Billy' Maginn took command of the plant on a Monday morning, he was facing a seething mutiny, which was ready to burst forth at the slightest cause.

Maginn brought two young assistants with him. They were installed in a little room, off his office, with a lot of testtubes, retorts, and other scientific apparatus. For the first two weeks, Maginn hardly went outside the room. He called in the foremen, one after another, and