the iron works 1fr. 34 [= 13d. Engl.

=

$0.26 Amer.] per stere

35 cube feet Eng. The weight and cost per stere of the different species of charcoal, employed in the high furnaces with the peat, are as follows:

Charcoal, resinous wood, 125=275=4fr. 14c.=38. 4d.= $0.80 Charcoal, hard wood, heavy, 213-468-5

Charcoal, employed,

143-314-4

49 =4 5 = 1.06

3 6

= 0.84

The price of a volume of charcoal is thus more than triple that of an equal volume of peat; it will, therefore, be advantageous to exchange, as soon as possible, the charcoal for the peat.

The ore smelted here is clay-iron stone, of moderate quality, and the fuel is, generally, turf and charcoal mixed. In the making of a ton of iron are employed,-Turf, 34 cwt. 3 qrs., costing 88. 9d.; Charcoal, 30 cwt. costing 24s. 7d.; together, £1 138. 4d. Producing iron of the very highest character.*

At Schlakenwerth in Bohemia, near Carlsbad, is a high furnace, which works with a mixture of charcoal of wood and peat charcoal. The peat is raised upon the plateaux of the Erzebirge, at more than 1000 metres elevation, and its exploitation is only practicable during two months in the year. They carbonize it in the same manner as wood, in circular piles, and obtain a very dense charcoal, which, on an average does not contain more than five per cent. of ashes.

The stere of peat charcoal weighs 300 kilogrammes = 660 lbs. English; and the stere of wood charcoal weighs only 141 kilogrammes 310; used in equal quantities in the high furnaces. The analysis of the carbonized turf is as follows, on the authority of M. Debette: fixed carbon, 67; volatile matters, 30; ashes, 3; total,

100.

Cubilot Furnaces.-A mixture of equal parts of peat charcoal and wood charcoal is employed in the cubilot furnaces of Bohemia, with heated air. Consequently, in the cubilot, one volume of peat produces absolutely the same effect as one volume of charcoal. See also an article on the applicability of Peat to manufacturing Iron," in L'Ancre and on the same subject in Mining Review, 1849.

We have taken much pains, in the foregoing valuable practicable statements, to reduce the German and French weights and measures to those of England; and also to exhibit the prices both in French, English, and American currency. The results are thus made intelligible to our readers.

KINGDOM OF WURTEMBERG.-Peat employed in Reverberatory and other Furnaces in Wurtemberg.-At Koenigsbronn, they execute with peat alone, the refining, and the second fusion of the pig metal;

Mining Journal of London, December 29th, 1845.

its puddling, the reheating of the lumps, and rolling the bars and plates; in fine all the operations which are made with coal in the English forges. The works are under the care of Mr. Veberling. The peat is of three kinds, as follows:

1st. Peat of Dattenhausen.-Fibrous or consisting of interlaced filaments, its colour varying from dark yellow to brown.

Peat in Iron making.-Comparative weight and volume of a brick

2d. Peat of Günzburg.-Compact; having an earthy aspect; colour deep brown, often passing to black; ashes, 6 or 7 per cent. 3d. Peat of Wilhelmsfield.-Dark brown; resembling straw to a certain extent. Weight of ashes 5 to 6 per cent.

This species is first dried in the air, at the place where it is dug. The bricks are placed upon a floor, and are turned from time to time. At the end of eight or ten days they are collected in little piles between which the air circulates freely; and three weeks after, if the weather has not been too rainy, they can be transported to the iron works to be further dried in kilns; the description and details of which we cannot follow here, and which bricks are either heated by means of the waste heat of the furnaces or by ovens constructed for the express purpose; or by the union of both. These turfs after being thus artificially dried, absorb anew the moisture of the atmosphere. It is therefore necessary to store them in places which are as dry as possible. However, the quantity which they will thus absorb is so small, that they remain several months and even a year in the storehouses without losing their applicability to metallurgic

uses.

Of these three species of peat that we have enumerated above, the proportionate diminution of their weight and volume when dried is as follows:

Cost of 1 kilogramme or metrical quintal [= 220 lbs.] delivered at

=

the iron works of Itzelberg, fr. 1, 29 c. 18. 6d. $0 36; being about $3 50, or from 138. to 158. per ton; the distance from Königsbronn being 2 kilometres (= 13 miles.)

M. Berthier's analysis of the peat of Königsbronn is as follows:

Carbon,

Volatile matters,
Ashes,

24.40

70.60

5.00

It is employed without admixture of other fuel, in the refining, puddling and reverberatory furnaces.*

BAVARIA.-Employment of Peat in the Iron Works of Weiherhammer. This peat is procured from the numerous tourbieres of the Fichtelgebirge, which are worked during the fine season, and the turf is left to dry for six months; then it is stored, but is not employed in the iron works until a year after it has been dug. The peat is of good quality, compact, heavy, yet containing no more than from 3 to 5 per cent. of ashes.

At the Weiherhammer works are two puddling furnaces, one of which is generally in activity. The puddled iron is converted into bars in the ordinary charcoal forges, or in a chafing (réchauffer) fire, which is fed with peat alone. As the peat which is dried in the air produces with difficulty a temperature high enough to remelt the iron, the combustion is hastened by means of a forced current of air. This air, furnished by the blowing machine of the refining furnace, the remelting of the pig metal is effected with the greatest facility. The result of these operations is as follows:-To produce 100 kilogrammes of bar iron 220 lbs. English; fuel required, all peat, 2,416 stère 85.32 cubic feet, English; pig metal employed, 128 kilogrammes 281 English lbs. These proportions are equivalent to 1 ton and 621 lbs. of pig metal, and 868 cubic feet of peat, to make 1 ton (2,240 lbs.) of bar iron.†

=

HOLLAND.-Holland possesses no mines of mineral coals. As some reparation for this privation Nature has furnished her with inexhaustible supplies of peat. In a compressed state, peat approaches. more closely in economical value to coal than is usually supposed. It has been successfully employed as a substitute for the latter, both in Europe and America, in iron works. For the ordinary domestic purposes of the poor, as we have witnessed in Holland, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England, the pungent quality of the smoke forms the chief objection to its use. This complaint obviously arises from the imperfect application of the fuel, as formerly prepared.

It has even been found that gas, for lighting, can be produced from

Sur l'emploi de la tourbe dans la mettallurgie du fer, par M. A. Delesse. Annales des Mines, tome ii. 1842, p. 758.

Sur l'emploi de la tourbe dans la metallurgie du fer, par M. A. Delesse, Annales des Mines, 1842. 1st Edition, 539.

it. As long ago as 1683, J. J. Beecher published an account of his having not only produced gas in England from common coal, but in Holland, from peat or turf.*

ORGANIC REMAINS IN THE CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD.

Insects.-Professor Agassiz remarks that, "with regard to insects, their existence has been already ascertained in the coal formation, which, in my opinion, is much more intimately connected with the palæozoic than with the secondary formations, by the whole of its organic characters."

Entomostraca, of small size, abound in certain coal formations, and they are found after that period in a multitude of deposits.

Trilobites, which are unquestionably the most ancient type of the class crustacea, appear under the strangest and most varied forms, from their first occurrence in the most ancient palæozoic formations. This type, however, does not go beyond the period of the coal formation, when it is replaced by gigantic Entomostraca, which are in some degree the precursors of the Macrura.

Fishes. When I commenced the publication of my researches on fossil fishes, I was acquainted with no species more ancient than that of the coal formation, and even with a very small number of these. Now, not only is the list of species and even of genera proper to these formations considerably increased, but the more ancient deposits are daily increasing more and more the number of types to add to our catalogues. The strata of the Devonian system, and those of the Silurian system, have in their turn furnished a contingent, which continually goes on increasing."

We cannot here resist the desire to pursue our quotations from the same Professor's Fossil Fauna of the precursor of the great carboniferous formation, the old red sandstone, which also contains the most ancient deposits of coal that are yet known. "The ichthyological fauna of the old red sandstone appears in such extraordinary and fantastical forms, that the most trifling remains of the beings which lived at that epoch, cannot fail to interest the attention of the naturalist. In no other formation do we find an assemblage of fishes, deviating so strikingly from all that we are acquainted with in our own days. The study of no other fauna requires so many years before we become sufficiently familiarized with its types to venture to classify them, and fix their relations to those of other creations.

Comparisons with the remains of anterior formations would have been impossible; because it is in the old red sandstone that we meet, for the first time, with a complete ichthyological fauna. The Silurian formation, it is true, contains some remains of fishes; but hitherto they have been so rare, and the number of species so limited, that it may be safely affirmed that it is only with the Devonian formation. that fishes have really acquired some importance among other fos

* History of Fossil Fuel, p. 405.

sils; or, at least, that the part they performed in nature becomes appreciable.'

"What first strikes one, on studying the ancient deposits is, that fishes are the only representatives of the branch vertebrata which exist in the old red sandstone, or even in the coal formation; in so much that we have a good right to call the epoch when these formations were deposited, the reign of fishes.

"The consideration that the fishes of the old red sandstone really represent the embryonic age of the reign of fishes, has even been with me a powerful motive to undertake the examination of these ancient animal remains, as my first monograph, forming a continuation of my researches; since it was here there existed evident facts to prove the truths of this great law of the development of all living beings."

In concluding the introductory article, from whence these few brief but comprehensive passages have been selected, M. Agassiz remarks, that viewing this assemblage of fossil fishes of the old red sandstone, as a simple group of divers, but contemporary species, and apart from all systematic considerations, we are struck with the great diversity which the species really present. "Who would have expected that we should ever find, in spaces so limited as those which have hitherto been explored, above a hundred species of fossil fishes, in the Devonian system alone; that is to say, in a stage of our formations which was believed a few years ago to be confined to the British Islands, and to which, in consequence, only a local value was assigned; and yet, all other things remaining equal, the ichthyological fauna which this formation contains, is as considerable as that which inhabits the coast of Europe; and even although the species of the old red sandstone do not belong to so great a number of families as the living species, they are not less varied in their forms and general aspect, nor less curious in their external characters and organization, nor less different from each other in size, and the degree of locomotive power with which they were doubtless endowed."*

Foot-marks discovered in the coal-measures of Pennsylvania.—In Vol. II. of the proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 30th of December, 1845, is an account of fossil foot prints in the sandstone of the coal measures of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, by Dr. A. T. King. Those particularly described are reptilian foot-marks, and occur about three miles from Greensburg, and others at Derry, twenty-seven miles from the same town, which seem chiefly to have been made by ruminant mammals.

These sites have subsequently been visited by Mr. Lyell, and form the subject of a preliminary article, in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London.t

From Professor Agassiz, "Monographie des poissons fossiles du vieux grès rouge." Article in Edinburgh New Phil. Journal, July, 1846, p. 17.

The number of species of fossil fishes, in the entire series of formations, are now known to M. Agassiz, to be not less than two thousand.

† Journal, Vol. II., p. 418, 1846.