mate by the extended cultivation of her lands. M. Tiserand's review of the proposal of the French government to cut away her forests, presents the view more in accord with our wants and the law of our progress. "The development of a country in wealth and population is incompatible with the existence of forests, and it may be laid down as a law, that its prosperity is in inverse proportion to the extent of its forests; therefore, to restrict the clearing off of forests under certain well understood conditions, is to oppose progress, an opposition quite unavailing." Wood is distinguished from all other fuel by the property of rapid re-production, and also the fact that it passes through various stages of beauty and utility to man before it is converted into fuel, and its use as fuel links many of us by sweet memories to the hearth-stones of our ancestors. Thus our interests, our sentiments, and our honor prompt the re-production of forests. The pertinent fact remains that forests and their products are not only useful, but indispensable, and their preservation will be controlled by the economic surroundings. And it might be added, the moral obligation of this generation, to make good the waste we have committed, in cutting manorial oaks from an entailed estate, brings conviction to every honest mind that we cannot live for ourselves alone, wickedly and profligately spending the rich gifts of our soil and climate, and that we should take measures to re-produce forests upon our farms to supply the wants of those who come after if we would not write as the standard of our civilzation "after us the deluge."

us,

Illinois is prompted by her worthiest men to enter upon this system of re-growth of forests as entirely practical, owing to her extensive coal deposits furnishing cheap fuel. I propose utilizing the peat of this state, that our forests may re-appear, as they only can by furnishing cheap fuel, a pre-requisite to their re-growth. Again, this duty of our people to reproduce forests, may be performed under the stimulent of the ruling motive, profit. To supply wood for fuel and other indispensible uses, requires three cords per person per annum of the entire population. The population of the state to-day is 1,176,000, requiring 3,528,000 cords per annum. Protected forests of healthy, hard wood increases during a period of twenty-five years, annually, an average of one cord per acre. This would require 3,528,000 acres to be maintained in growth for twenty-five years, to provide wood for fuel and for other indispensi

ble purposes for the present population of this state, from the annual product of these unprotected forests. By the census reports of 1870, there was 11,715,000 acres in the farms of this state, and of this area in farms, 3,437,442 acres were denominated wood-lands. So nearly does this wood-land area correspond with the acreage required to provide fuel and wood for other indispensible purposes, to the entire present population of the state by its annual increase alone, that we are compelled to acknowledge we need only to replace the brush, dwarf oak, poplar and willow, etc., on our farms to solve the domestic fuel question for all time for ourselves. But the increase of our population must be provided for. Then extend this area of protected re-growth of forests to fifty years and the annual increase will meet that demand.

The estimated product of an acre of land of protected growth, of healthy, hard wood is estimated at forty cords, worth, in 1905 not not less than $2 per cord stumpage, or an accumulated wealth to the state, distributed among the owners of farms, of two hundred and eighty-two million dollars in thirty years. By the census of 1870, the population of the state doubles in thirty years. Then the coal imported into the state must equal one million tons annually, at a cost of $8,000,000 annually, or an aggregate of $180,000,000 paid out to neighboring states for coal, without any increase of manufacturing, smelting or metallurgical operations in the state. And in contrast with the present system, it would show a gain of $426,000,000 to the state in thirty years, if peat is utilized for fuel. To the state, the inducement is strong enough. In view of the fact that the geology of the rock formation of the state precludes the hope of ever finding coal, we cannot expect coal to be cheaper than at present, with the nearest coal beds three hundred miles distant from the present center of population, and that center moving more distant annually.

There are conditions imposed upon people who depend upon imported coal for heat and warmth, other than pecuniary, such as an impaired moral sense, and loss of manly independence in the presence of a monopoly control of a necessary of life, aided by facile combinations of men, who so nicely adjust the smallest supply to the largest demand, as the owners of mines, miners and transporters of coal are; who create well timed panics by their unhallowed combinations, and who extort from their fellow men, through their suscepti

bilities and weaknesses; thereby engendering cowardly fear and apprehension among consumers of coal, that their cart loads will become pails full, and their shrinking weight will increase in price, as they are doled out by middle men, whose harvest comes when snow, ice and dread winter chains their victims. A glance at those who are thus dependent will indicate the loss to a state whose poor are cold and hungry. Prof. Emmons, in his report on the Geological Survey of New York says, "anything that will save further destruction of forests, and we have it in the homely substance peat, an available article, which prejudice alone can prevent general use. Naturally the question arises, how a substance found in such quantities, and generally existing in those districts where fuel is expensive, should so long have been overlooked. The reply must be found among those anomolous facts that men often fail to do that which their interests demand from fear of failure, or until compelled by the tyrant necessity. This inconsistency is most marked by the indifference of the people and their representatives on the subject of fuel supply. Enterprising and indolent alike, have drifted into the use of coal without a thought of the unnumbered millions of tons of valuable peat fuel scattered throughout the state, seemingly to provide for our absolute needs, while speeches, lectures, sermons and essays, eminating from the best and most learned men, if not the most practical thinkers in the state, are produced and reproduced upon other subjects, until finance, transportation and tarriff are common place in every household in the state, while the supply of fuel, a vital element that touches our actual physical existence as food does, involving the future progress of the state, is ignored, abandoned or surrendered to rings and railroads, without even an effort on the part of our legislature to know through any systematic examination of the subject, whether the industrial efforts made to substitute peat fuel were based on sound principles, or were a mere repetition of previous experiments in preparing it. And this inconsistency is confirmed by the fact that peat has been used since the twelfth century, prepared by hand labor, and is used to day in Wisconsin, if used at all, in the same crude form as for centuries past.

While the calorific power of peat as compared to coal or wood is as well known and defined by actual use, scientific experiment and careful analysis, as either wood or coal, showing that when it is

condensed and dry as mineral coal, it is equal to bituminous coal, pound for pound, for generating steam or for metallurgical purposes, and has a higher value in the production of what are known as the higher grades of charcoal iron, as is shown by the following tables:

In a paper read before the New York Polytecnic Association by J. B. Hyde, I find an analysis of eleven samples of English, Scotch and Irish peat, showing them to consist of 43.3 carbon, 48 vegetable matter, 6.7 ash. Coarse grass-peat contained 17 per cent. ash, fine grass-peat 3 per cent. ash, pitch-peat 8 per cent. ash, lower bed-peat 8 per cent. ash, Abbyville 5 per cent., and Eschfield 27 per cent. And the ash from wood charcoal, as follows:

Bituminous coal, New Castle 3.3, Welch 3.25, Scotch 4.25, Pennsylvania 4.75, Illinois 7, Indiana 7.

Prof. Johnson's table of relative value of wood and peat, give: Beach-wood split and dry 100. Peat, air-dried, containing 25 per cent. water, 100. Peat, hot dried, containing 10 per cent. of water, 148. Peat-charcoal from condensed peat, 173. Peat, simply cut and dried, 80. Beach-wood charcoal, 190. Oak-wood, summer dried, 118. Birch, summer dried 95. White pine, 72. Alder, 65. Linden, 65. Red pine, 61. Poplar, 56.

And also relative value of peat, wood and anthracite coal, in carbon-wood 39.1, condensed peat 47.2, authracite coal 91, Illinois coal 51. Compressed peat to a specific gravity of 1.160 give coke, 1.04 specific gravity. Hard-wood, ash, elm 0.800 to 0.855 specific gravity.

Mr. Hyde, in his paper, gives a table of comparative calorific power of several combustibles :

Intensity of heat from dense peat, and from coal coke about equal, and compressed peat charcoal more intense, as the fuel is more dense than wood coal.

M. Berthier, gives the following table of results of tests of the smelting value of different fuels:

This table shows peat (crude) equal to wood; and peat coal, exceeding wood charcoal, New Castle and Glasgow bituminous coal in combustible element, and in calorific power. Charcoal from good air dried peat will equal about 33 per cent. in weight of the peat, and contains about 90 per cent. of carbon, and double the density of hard wood coal, and being free from sulpher, it is extremely valuable in the arts, particularly in the manufacture of the finest steel. In 1865 there was 10,500 tons of peat used in Massachusetts for annealing wire; 80 bushels weighing 1850 lbs. was equal to one cord of chesnut wood. Taylor, in his coal statistics, and others, quote from the report of Mr. Williams on common peat. Mr. Williams had been employed for twenty-five years experimenting upon the economy of different fuels for generating steam. Peat was by powerful mechanical pressure condensed to specific gravity of 1,160 atmospherically dry. Charcoal from this peat had double the density of that from dry hard wood. This pcat was used on a Thames steamer for generating steam, 12 cwt. equaled 2800 lbs. of New Castle coal, and extended experiments show 114 cwt. of this peat to equal 18 cwt. of bituminous coal. Dr. D. D. Parmelee in a paper read before the American Institute, states that carbonized, compressed peat gives a fine coherent coke of great value for metallurgical purposes. A locomotive was run over 70 miles of road for three months and showed a saving of 30 per cent. over bituminous coal, using coal furnaces and flues with fire door open and dampers down. M. Barstall, Bristol, England, gives his result in the use of peat in generating steam. Evaporating 5 lbs. of water with one of peat fuel, this, as compared with dry oak wood was found 10 per cent. superior. The French Emperor requested Mr. Rogers to experiment on the Paris and Orleans Railway with peat fuel, who re