the mode of preparation, both as regards economy in production, and pleasantness and utility in consumption.

There are many processes in which peat, even as at present prepared in the Highlands, is found more serviceable than coal; as in smelting and finishing the best descriptions of iron, and in making malt for distillation. For both of these purposes there has been a considerable traffic in peats ever since I can remember.

The using of our peat mosses would give to our own people the employment and wages which we now pay to others for the mining of coals. It would create traffic for the railways which pass over our mosses—as the Highland, the Dingwall and Skye, and the Sutherland and Caithness. It would lay bare for cultivation vast tracts of country now felt to be needed for the production of straw, hay, and turnips with which to produce more and cheaper beef and mutton.

In regard to the reclamation of land, I remember when Blair Drummond Moss was being reclaimed, and so great was the value attached to the land beneath the peat, that men were employed, and machinery was invented, to remove the peat moss into the river Forth, to be carried down the Firth, and now you will see some of the finest farms and crops in Scotland where, forty years ago, there was nothing but a brown wilderness, fit habitation for nothing but snipe !

I do not know any towns so well situated as Inverness, Nairn and Forres for turning our peat resources to account. I have been on the look-out for available mosses, and I find the finest fields for such an undertaking on the south side of the Highland line, between Dava and Grantown, and Kildrummie Moss, near Nairn.

The peats which come into Inverness are brought a distance of from seven to ten miles in small carts, at a cost which you can readily understand to be enormous. To Forres they could be taken by train from Dava, and thus be less than half the price we pay for them in Inverness.

I know that many persons found coals cheaper than peats, and that coals are used in the heart of peat-producing countries. That is only analogous to the other fact that coals from Newcastle and from Lanark are burnt over the coal mines of Brora and Kilkenny. You can well understand that it would not pay the Durham and Staffordshire farmers to dig for their own use, the coal which lies under their own homesteads. The concentration of trained force and the division of labour make it better for the farmers to stick to their agriculture and for the miners to stick to their mining. If the coalmasters had no better roads to their pits than our farmers

have to their mosses, and if they had no regular traffic, they would find the production of coals just as bad, if not worse, than our ordinary citizens find the producing of peats.

With trained hands, with proper implements and machinery, with drying sheds, with good roads, tramways, and railways—all made available for turning our mosses to account-does it not stand to reason that we might have peat fuel at our doors, at least as much cheaper as it is nearer to us than coal.

And what is thus, as I think, so obvious a priori, is established by facts gathered from different parts of the Continent of Europe and America.

It is reported that on the Grand Trunk Railway, peat is manufactured in large quantities, at a cost of 9s to 10s per ton, where coals were 40s, and now, in all probability, 45s or perhaps 50s per ton. Peat, there, then, where the manufacture is gone about as it ought to be with us, is not one-fourth the cost of the coal.

Another test. On a train running 177 miles, the coal expenditure was found to be £6. It took £6 3s worth of wood to do the same work; but with peat it was done for £1 10s. There, they use machinery for pulping the peat moss. It is then lifted by another machine which travels over the ground, and spreads the pulp over the grass, heather, and rushes. In this rough way it is left to dry, and afterwards gathered in shapeless masses, and burnt without any further preparation. You will observe, that in this instance, the only improvement consists in the use of machinery. There is evidently no improvement in the finished article.

In Bavaria, there are considerable manufactories of peat, simply cut and prepared as is done already in this country; and the chief use to which the article is applied is that of feeding railway engines.

In the Netherlands, peat, of the ordinary description, is the staple fuel of the country; and during the season people flock in from Hanover, and from the adjacent parts of Germany to work in the mosses, the same as the Irish reapers used to migrate to the English and Scotch harvest, and as the hop-pickers flock to Kent and Farnham.

But in the Netherlands the manufacture of peat has made some progress towards the production of a perfect article of fuel. So it has in Bavaria, in Prussia, in Bohemia, and in France.

There have been two principles attempted to be carried out in this improved manufacture. The one is that of compressing the peat by machinery. This finished article I wish you to remember under the name of " compressed peat." The other principle is that of so preparing and placing the material, that it will become dense

in obedience to the law by which the particles of matter are drawn to each other. The finished article in this case is called "dense peat."

Of the first of these, I shall only wait to say, that machinery is used to tear up the moss, and reduce it as quickly as possible to dust. This is then placed in a machine, and so driven together by force, that it comes out in solid cakes, ready for use. I have seen them, and in form they were very much like as if you cut a large sausage in discs of about an inch and a-half in thickness.

Attempts have been made to compress the peat in a wet state, but I do not know that it has been successfully done anywhere. One of the methods adopted is that of reducing the moss to the finest pulp, then spreading it out of a certain thickness, and allowing it to dry and solidify of its own accord.

It is a curious thing that this method is simply an improvement upon what was done by our forefathers when the more tenacious bogs had been exhausted. I have seen them take the more brittle strata of the peat, mix the substance with water, and spread it out on the sward. In the course of a few days, it had acquired a certain degree of solidity, when they entered with their bare feet, and cut it in long pieces from side to side of the patch. It was then cut across into lengths of an ordinary peat, and afterwards treated in every respect as is done with peats cut in the usual way.

Now, in the four northern provinces of Holland, in Brandenberg, in Gratzen, in Bohemia, and in the French department of Oise, the old-fashioned principle is being carried out by machinery. The material is macerated by being put through a machine somewhat like that used in preparing clay for making bricks.

In some of these places, the macerated mass comes out in two continuous pieces, which are cut, either by hand or by machinery, into suitable lengths. The peats are then placed on trays, and laid out to dry in racks.

At Aibling, in Bavaria, the material is prepared in pretty much the same way, under the direction of Dr. Herold of Munich; but instead of being formed into peats or bricks, it is cut into junks of about four inches in length. These pieces are placed upon enclined trays, on which they move, gradually passing from one tray to another, until at the end of their journey they drop off in dry balls.

In

At Gratzen, and at several other places, the pulp is simply spread out on a prepared surface, and levelled to a certain thickness by means of boards attached to the feet of the workers. the course of a day or two, or three, according to the state of the weather, the stratum is cut, lengthwise and across, into something

the size and shape of bricks.

And such is the attraction of the

particles that every peat is found in the course of drying to contract and solidify so as to leave a large space between the rows, where there was only a cut to begin with.

When they are sufficiently firm to be handled, they are lifted and placed in racks to dry.

It is to be noticed that in all the instances I have given, the exceptiing Aibling, the drying is done in the open air. Dr. Herold, however, has done what I have no doubt we shall do when we take the matter up-he has erected sheds, so as not only to keep off the rain, but cause a greater draught through the racks.

There is oue fact which I shall mention by way of counterbalancing what a very patriotic gentleman in Ross-shire said a short time ago. Early in the season he went manfully into the peat-cutting; but when the time for carrying them home arrived, he made inquiry, and found that to get at them you had to wade through two hundred yards of water! This "dished" his peatcutting enterprise, and he gave the fact to the world as an evidence of the impossibility of doing anything in the matter. But mark.

In the peat manufacture of M. Colart at Fontaine-sur-Somme, the material is all taken from a marsh under water, from one to two feet in depth. The peat is actually cut under the water. And a German of the name of Brosowsky has invented a machine to be used for the purpose. What would our friend in Ross-shire say to these Frenchmen and Germans? What they would say to him, I presume, would be, to adapt his plans to the requirements of the case, and not to wait till Jupiter dried up the marsh.

Even in the German case, the finished article did not cost more than 6s per ton, including the labour of taking the raw material from under the water.

The cost at Herzfelde was 6s 6d per ton; at Aibling, 12s 2d, but expected to be reduced by Dr. Herold; in America, on the Grand Trunk, 9s to 10s; New England, 8s to 10s; New York, 9s to 10s.

I have said nothing about Box's method, which has been patented, and which has been pretty well ventilated in the press. Besides, there are some points connected with that method of which some of us are not quite sure yet.

I must not, however, pass over the fact, that we can have light as well as heat from peat. I have seen peat gas made, I have seen it burnt, and have seen it tested, and know it to be a fact that it can be made; and it is expected that the suburb of Inchecore, near Dublin, will be lighted with gas made from peat.

Another fact. You will see in this day's Scotsman that a com

G

pany is being formed to manufacture fuel from the bogs of Kerry, in the south-west of Ireland.

And speaking of Ireland, as I should like to so do of Scotland, I must direct attention to the fact that a commission, originated by Mr. Edward Purdon, ex-Lord Mayor of Dublin, and proprietor of The Irish Farmer's Gazette, has just returned from the Continent with a large mass of valuable information-not merely in theory or in science-as to what has actually been done in the way of utilizing bogs to yield fuel. To the report published by this commission I am indebted for some of the most telling facts in this paper; and when we in this country, as well as our friends in Ireland, shall have had the sense to make proper use of our bogs, we shall, if we have the good taste and honesty which ought to characterise us, ascribe a good deal of the result to the patriotism and enterprise of Alderman Purdon, and to the information collected and made public by the other members of the commission.

FEBRUARY 6, 1873.-On this date Mr. William Mackay read a second paper on the Legends of Glen-Urquhart. For the first paper, see Transactions, Vol. I., p. 43.

SGEULACHDAN GHLINN-URCHUDAINN.

(An dara earrann.)

'Nuair a leugh mi dhuibh a' cheud earrann de na sgeulachdan so, mu dheireadh na bliadhna 1871, dh' ainmich mi gu'm b'i mo dhùrachd, ged' b'i sud a' chéud oidhche, nach b'i an oidhche mu dheireadh a chuireadh an Comunn air leth airson sgeulachdan na Gaidhealtachd. Bho sin fhuair sinn sgeula no dha bho Alasdar Mac Gillemhicheil, a tha ro-thaitneach. Is mòr am feum a dheanadh sibhse a chaidh àrach ann an Glinn na Gaidhealtachd na'n sgriobhadh sibh gach seann sgéul a chuala sibh 'am bun teintean céìlidh bhur n-òige. Tha na sgeulachdan so taitneach ma tha iad faoin; agus creidibh mise gu'n tig an là anns am bi iad glé mheasail. Cha'n eil cunntas chinnteach againn air moran de chleachdaidhean ar n-aithrichean, agus tha e àraid dhuinn am beagan a th' againn a thionail 'sa ghleidheadh gu cùramach, am fad 'sa tha sinn an comas sin a dheanadh.

Toisichidh mi nis' a rithist air sgeulachdan "Gleann mo chridhe rinn m' arach òg " le sgeula Mhonaidh Mac Righ Lochlainn 'thoir dhuibh.