STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 93 



to Doppler/^^ who stated that he had received from Salzburg, in 

 Tyrol, about 15 pounds of a black gelatinous substance, which had 

 been obtained near Aussee in a peat bed, about 10 feet thick. It 

 occurred in layers at 6 to 8 feet from the surface and it had been 

 rejected as worthless. Schrotter,^^^ who studied this chemically, 

 ascertained that, dried at 100° C, it lost 78.5 per cent, of water and 

 became a hard mass with conchoidal fracture and vitreous luster, 

 resembling greatly the pitch obtained by distillation of coal tar. 

 Dried at ordinary temperature, about 18° C, it parted with 66.22 per 

 cent, of water. The wet gelatinous material lost 14.6 per cent, to 

 caustic potash, equivalent to 68 per cent, of the dried material, but 

 when dried, it lost nothing to the potash solution. Hydrochloric acid 

 precipitated from this solution a brown substance which, dried, con- 

 tains ; Carbon, 48.06; hydrogen, 4.98; nitrogen, 1.03; oxygen, 40.07; 

 ash, 5.86. 



If ash and nitrogen be ignored the composition is, compared with 

 that of cellulose, 



Carbon 51.59 4324 



Hydrogen . . . .' 5.34 6.30 



Oxygen 43-03 50.56 



The presence of ammonia is evident when a fragment is boiled with 

 caustic potash. He recognized in this gelatinous substance simply 

 a more than usually homogeneous peat, owing its gelatinous character 

 to the great quantity of absorbed water. 



At the same meeting, Haidinger^^* discussed the mineral relations 

 of this material, to which he assigned the name, Dopplerit. It is 

 amorphous, but thin sections, under strong power, show the pres- 

 ence of fine fibers in the mass. One of the pieces received from 

 Doppler enclosed fragments of unchanged peat, in which Phragmites 

 communis was recognized. Haidinger believed that this structureless 

 peat is the beginning point of the whole series of changes, which 

 up to that time had been wholly conjectural. 



132 Doppler, " Ueber ein merkwurdige in Oesterreich abgefundene gela- 

 tinose Substanz," Sitz.-ber. k. Akad. IViss. Wien, 1849, Bd. 3, Abt. 2, p. 239. 



133 Sch rotter, the same, pp. 285-287. 



134 w. Haidinger, the same, pp. 288-292. 



