Randan

French dynamite was soaked into this stuff, quarried from peat bogs in the Auvergne.

Randannite is the French name for the infusorial silica dug from bogs around Randan in the Puy-de-Dôme, and the English form appears in print by 1850 in Dana. Late nineteenth century French dynamite was standardized at about 21 percent randannite as the absorbent holding the nitroglycerin. Diatomite from other sources filled the same role in Nobel's original formulation.