1881. 71 Trans. N. V. Ac. Scz. 
The following paper was read by Prof. H. L. FAIRCHILD: 
ON A PECULIAR COAL-LIKE TRANSFORMATION OF PEAT, RECENTLY 
DISCOVERED AT SCRANTON, PENN. 
The material which we shall notice this evening has naturally been 
regarded, on account of its associations, as illustrating in some degree 
the formation of coal. A brief description of that alteration of peat 
which has resulted in the formation of coal, is therefore desirable. 
Peat results from decomposition of vegetable matter under water. 
The latter excludes the atmosphere and largely prevents the oxidation, 
which removes the vegetable debris on the upland, and which if rapid 
we call combustion, or if slow, decay. In northern regions peat-swamp 
vegetation is commonly a sort of moss (Sphagnum) which grows upward 
as it dies below. Great peat deposits are also produced in lower 
latitudes from the debris of forest trees. The great Dismal Swamp is 
a fine example, and in the Hackensack and Newark meadows we have 
examples of peat-formations of great depth, produced by the slow 
subsidence of the region and the accumulation of salt-marsh vege- 
tation. 
In former geological ages, immense peat deposits were produced in 
the vast lowlands along the borders of the continents, or at the deltas 
of the ancient rivers. These great swamps were frequently submerged 
in the sea and deeply buried beneath mud and sand. This event occur- 
red perhaps many times in a single locality. The buried peat slowly 
deccmposed. Much of the hydrogen and oxygen of the vegetable 
tissue, and some of the carbon, were eliminated. The remainder was 
consolidated by the weight of the superincumbent strata, and the 
result is bituminous coal. Thus we have the six to twenty coal beds ot 
Pennsylvania, or the one hundred coal-seams of Nova Scotia. 
The evidence that our coals are primarily formed in this manner is 
abundant, clear and incontrovertible: Few subjects are by our induc- 
tive science more definitely settled than this. We find these buried 
vegetable deposits in every stage of decomposition and alteration. 
Where the containing rocks are undisturbed, lying in their original 
positions, the coal contains a large proportion of volatile matter, and 
is bituminous. But where the rocks are dislocated and folded the coal 
is, by the pressure and heat, changed to anthracite or perhaps to 
graphite. The proportion of fixed carbon, or the degree of alteration, 
is always proport’onate to the amount of disturbance which the asso- 
ciated rocks have suffered. Hence anthracite coal is a metamorphosed 
coal, just as marble is metamorphosed limestone, or quartzyte is meta- 
morphosed sandstone. The metamorphism of coal is still going on. 
The escape of the volatile matter, in which the change consists, is 
