AGE OF COAL. 213 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE, OR AGE OF COAL. 



306. Propriety of the Name. Nothing has been made 

 more plain by the investigations of geologists than that 

 thousands of centuries ago there was an age, and that a 

 very long one, devoted expressly by the Creator to the 

 formation and storing up of coal for the future use of 

 man. It seems eminently proper, therefore, to call this 

 the Age of Coal, or the Carboniferous Age. Observe 

 that all the other ages that transpired during the forma- 

 tion of the earth were marked by the predominance of 

 certain classes of animals, and are named accordingly; 

 but this is named from a mineral production which came, 

 as you have seen in 42, from certain chemical changes 

 in vegetable substances. Animals of most of the various 

 classes were abundant in this age, but no class was espe- 

 cially predominant over all the others, so that it is im- 

 possible to derive a name from that source. There 

 seems to be no room for choice, then, but we are driven 

 to the name which has been adopted by universal con- 

 sent. 



307. Localities of Coal. There are more and larger 

 beds of coal in North America than in any other part of 

 the world. Great Britain comes next in order. The 

 coal there is mostly bituminous, more or less, while in 

 this country there are large quantities of the anthracite, 

 or non-bituminous coal. Pennsylvania has a larger area 

 of coal in proportion to its whole area than any other 

 part of the world. There is coal in Spain, France, Bel- 

 gium, and Germany. Russia exhibits over a wide area 

 some of the rocks of the coal period, but has very little 

 coal. 



