The production of peat as a general soil conditioner has recently become a potentially valuable small industry for Texas and surely a new one. The credit for realizing the possibilities and need of peat in Texas perhaps should go to Messrs. Joiner, B. P. Atkinson, and Sanquinet, who began production of peat on a small scale near Lexington, Lee County, Texas, in 1940. Since the year of first production, Mr. Atkinson has discovered many hundreds of acres of peat heretofore unnoticed, and several bogs have been leased for commercial production.

Like other young industries that have made an attempt to begin operations in Texas on some newly discovered resource, peat is likely to meet with the common drawback: the prevalent belief of some landowners that the article is a "gold mine," when actually the chances for loss are even greater than in ordinary types of business. At the best, the peat industry in Texas will find it difficult to overcome certain production and marketing bottlenecks for a long time to come. Therefore, every advantage should be afforded the producers to place before the public a graded product equal to the imported varieties.

For an extended treatise and bibliography on peat, see Bureau of Economic Geology Mineral Resource Circular No. 16, "Peat Deposits in Texas," by F. B. Plummer.