42 Kaxsas academy of Science. 



of Yale College, no less than twenty millions of meteors enter the earth's atmosphere 

 each twenty-four hours, many of these reaching the earth's surface as the finest of me- 

 teoric dust. This dust, which like the Logan county rocks contains nickel and cobalt 

 and iron and manganese and other chemical elements, has been found to cover the 

 roofs of the houses of the city of Quito in South America after an unusual meteoric dis- 

 play. It has been found universally present in the ice and snow of the Alpine and Arc- 

 tic regions. It may be collected at any time from the atmosphere by exposing to the 

 air a properly prejjared surface, as was done by Tissandier. It was dredged from the 

 bottom of the deepest Atlantic ocean by the Challenger expedition. There is no 

 doubt that the old Tertiary ocean of western Kansas received this meteoric dust as 

 do the oceans of the present time. If the mud and sand and pebbles of our Atlantic 

 should ever become hardened into rock, and form a part of the dry land, the chemists 

 of that time would be able to detect the nickel and cobalt dust, whose meteoric origin 

 has been established by our chemists and meteorologists. We are now applying the 

 same test to the bottom of the old Tertiary ocean, now a part of the dry land, and 

 find convincing evidence that then as now the atmosphere was traversed by multi- 

 tudes of meteoric bodies producing the same effect as they now produce. This dis- 

 integrated meteoric matter sinking to the bottom of the ocean then as now, would 

 be distributed by the under-currents and lodged in cavities and depressions of the 

 ocean-bottom according to its specific gravity. Such a depression or basin seems 

 to have been struck by the Logan county miners. But these deposits are not suit- 

 able for mining, for the quantity of nickel-dust is too small to warrant the expecta- 

 tion of any returns upon the money invested. 



THE EVAPORATIVE POWER OF KANSAS COALS. 



BY LUCIEN I. BLAKE, LAWRENCE, KANSAS. 



The commercial value of coal is not a criterion of its actual heating power. The 

 cost of mining, distance from market, competition, etc., determine the former, while 

 the latter depends solely upon the coal per se. Further, the total amount of heat ob- 

 tained by the complete combustion of a given amount of coal exceeds largely — 

 often by fully 100 per cent. — the amount usefully obtained in practice. Confining 

 ourselves to coal used in the production of steam, this is due to imperfect combus- 

 tion, to arrangement of grate and heating surface, methods of firing, etc., etc. The 

 same coal in different furnaces may give different results. Duty tests upon any one 

 plant give the relative values of coals for that plant only. There is, however, an im- 

 portant method of comparing the actual heating values of coals which is independent 

 of commercial values and of diversified conditions of burning. It is by measuring 

 the heat given out by coals under ijerfect combustion expressed in terms of their eva- 

 porative powers. To this end, therefore, it is quite customary to compare coals 

 according to their evaporative powers. By this is meant how many pounds or kilo- 

 grams of water at 212° F. will be converted into steam, also at 212°, and under 760 

 mm. pressure, by one pound or one kilogram of coal. The object of the present in- 

 vestigation is to compare coals from the different Kansas veins according to their 

 evaporative powers as defined above. 



It might be mentioned that this investigation has been undertaken in conjunc- 

 tion with E. H. S. Bailey, Professor of Chemistry at the State University, who will 

 make report upon the chemical analysis of the same specimens of coal. Both inves- 

 tigations are preliminary to a report to the State Board of Agriculture. The coals 

 for testing have been collected personally by one or both of us at the mines. A va- 



