Excerpt from Peaty Swamp Lands: Sand and "Alkali" Soils

Commonly the peaty soil occupies the lower lying areas, but sometimes it is found in table'lands. It is always on land which was at one time poorly drained.

The peaty soil varies from almost pure b'rown peat, containing 80 percent or more of combustible material, to black muck, con taining much less organic matter. In some places these soils ex tend continuously over tracts of considerable size (sometimes over several square miles), to the exclusion of other types of soil; but more commonly the peaty soils occupy irregularly shaped areas scattered about in bodies of land of different kinds. Sandy land is frequently found adjoining or surrounding the tracts of peaty soil, and sand is the most common subsoil found under peaty. Swamp soils, altho a clay subsoil is found in places, and sometimes the peaty soil is underlain, at a depth of only a few feet, with limestone rock. Occasionally the peaty soil adjoins ordinary Illi nois prairie land.

Peat itself consists largely of partially decayed sphagnum moss or coarse grass, swamp sedge, flags, etc., which grew in the water which once covered these areas. In growing, the moss, grasses, carbon and oxygen from the carbon dioxid in the air, and hydrogen from water, being similar to other plants in this respect. The water in which the sphagnum moss and grass grows is more or less stagnant. It is usually seepage or surface-drainage water, and contains sufficient nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and other essential elements of plant food to meet the needs of the growing vegetation. Both nitrogen and phosphorus enter into fairly stable organic combinations with carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and when the vegetation changes to peat, and even when the peat partially decays, these two elements (especially the nitro gen) are largely retained in the organic matter. The potassium, however, reverts more largely to the soluble form and it is finally lost to a greater or less extent in the drainage waters flowing from the peat bogs. Probably most of the Illinois beds are grass peat, altho there is some moss peat in the state. Indeed, in the detail soil survey of Lake county one swamp of several acres was found where the sphagnum moss is still growing luxuriantly over a bed of moss peat.

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