Five ovens filled with peat are run into a pit in a drying house, in which blocks of fresh peat are arranged for drying. Each oven is connected with a flue, and fire is applied. The peat burns below, and the heat generated in the coking, warms the air of the drying house. When the escaping smoke becomes transparent, the pit in which the ovens stand is filled with water slightly above their lower edges, whereby access of air to the burning peat is at once cut off. When cool, the ovens are run out and replaced by others filled with peat. Each oven holds about 600 lbs. of peat, and the yield of coal is 25 _per cent._ by weight. The small yield compared with that obtained by Weber's method, is due to the burning of the peat and the coal itself, in the draught of air that passes through the ovens. The author has carbonized, in an iron retort, specimens of peat prepared by Elsberg's, Leavitt's, and Aschcroft and Betteley's processes. Elsberg's gave 35, the others 37 _per cent._ of coal. The coal from Elsberg's peat was greatly fissured, and could be crushed in the fingers to small fragments. That from the other peats was more firm, and required considerable exertion to break it. All had a decided metallic brilliancy of surface. 16.--_Metallurgical Uses of Peat._ In Austria, more than any other country, peat has been employed in the manufacture of iron. In Bavaria, Prussia, Wirtemberg, Hanover, and Sweden, and latterly in Great Britain, peat has been put to the same use. The general results of experience, are as follows:-- Peat can only be employed to advantage, when wood and mineral coal are expensive, or of poor quality. Peat can be used in furnaces adapted for charcoal, but not in those built for mineral coal. Good air-dry peat, containing 20 to 30 _per cent._ of water, in some cases may replace a share of charcoal in the high furnace. At Pillersee, in Austria, spathic iron ore has been reduced by a mixture of fir-wood charcoal, and air-dry peat in the proportions of three parts by bulk of the former to one of the latter. The use of peat was found to effect a considerable saving in the outlay for fuel, and enabled the production to be somewhat increased, while the excellence of the iron was in no way impaired. The peat was of the best quality, and was worked and moulded by hand. When the ore is refractory and contains impurities that must be fluxed and worked off in slag, a large proportion of air-dry peat cannot be used to advantage, because the evaporation of the water in it consumes so much heat, that the requisite temperature is not easily attained.