Feb. 1, 1886.] 



KNOVVALEDGE ♦ 



111 



But space would fail me if I should attempt to indicate 

 all tlie material apparently borrowed by Josepbus witb 

 tbe " deliberate dishonesty" ascribed to liim by Canon 

 Farrar, from the Gospels and the Acts, or from accounts 

 of actual events described in those records. One 

 circumstance only I must add to those already dealt 

 with. It would seem even as though Josephus had heard 

 the actual details of the conduct recorded of another 

 Josephus — to wit, Joseph of Arimathea : — for after 

 claiming to be wli;it Joseph of Arimathea was, " a 

 councillor, a rich and just man," he states that having on 

 a certain occasion been sent by Titus to a village called 

 Thecoa, not very far from Jerusalem, he saw on his 

 return, among other crucified persons, three whom he 

 remembered "as former acquaintances." " I was very 

 sorry at this, in my iliind," he proceeds, "and went with 

 tears in my eyes to Titus and told him of them ; so he 

 immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to 

 have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their 

 recovery ; yet two of them died under the phj'sician's 

 hands, while the third recovered." This, he would know 

 well, would be understood by all readers of his time to 

 indicate clearly that the two who died had merited their 

 punishment, like the two thieves, but that the third was 

 innocent. 



It appears to me that the only other explanation which 

 can possibly be suggested for these multiplied coinci- 

 dences, would be that the Gospels themselves, being 

 written a century later, as the author of " Supernatural 

 Religion " considers to be proved, came to include 

 accounts which had been handed down by tradition, but 

 related to actual events as recorded by Josejihus. This 

 is the explanation siiggested by Mr. Solomon in his work 

 " The Jesus of History and the Jesus of Tradition." But 

 this explanation besides being inconsistent with accepted 

 views respecting the authenticity of the New Testament 

 canon, does not accord well with the conclusion of Canon 

 Farrar that Josephus was a renegade and a sycophant, 

 — deliberately dishonest in regard to events which had 

 taken place in the lifetime of his father and had closed 

 but a few years before his own birth. One or other ex- 

 planation we 7nust take, it would seem. In what sort of 

 favour, by the way, Josephus stood with Titus, is perhaps 

 sufficiently shown by his action with regard to his 

 ci'ucified friends, — as described by himself. 



COAL. 

 By W. Mattieu Williams. 



lUTrMIXOUS SHALES AND THE ORIGIN OF COAL. 



HE trial and controversy concerning the 

 Boghead or Torbane Hill mineral was 

 instructive, would have been more so 

 had the scientific witnesses been heard. 

 Commercially it is coal, simply because it 

 has been bought and sold under that 

 name, was thus dealt with when the 

 bargain under litigation was made, but, if we are to 

 admit the existence of such a class of minerals as 

 bituminous shales, it certainly belongs to this cla.ss, 

 regarded from the point of view of scientific classifi- 

 cation. 



One experiment that was made in Edinburgh at the 

 time, but of which no account appears to have been 

 published, is, I think, decisive. A piece of boghead was 

 carved roughly to the shape of a man's head. This was 

 put into a fire, all its hydrogen an4 carbon burnt out, and 



there remained a solid lump of baked earthy matter still 

 bearing the shape of the original lump. The original 

 material was evidently a shaley rock, impregnated some- 

 lioiv with bituminous matter. I place special emphasis 

 on this word somehow, as it presents an interesting pro- 

 blem which a sound theory of the formation of coal is 

 bound to solve. Why have we in so many instances dis- 

 tinct seams of bituminous shale and of true coal so near 

 together — in some cases in actual contact 1 The Leeswood 

 cannel seam, for example, rests directly on a floor of 

 shale, and is directly topped by a roof of .^ihale, both 

 black and bituminous. The products of distillation are 

 the same of both shales and the two intermediate seams 

 of cannel, but the shales leave behind masses of incom- 

 bustible stone, the cannel lumps of combustible coke. 



Still, in this classification, as in so many others, an 

 absolute line cannot be drawn. Generally speaking, 

 true coal leaves, on complete combustion, from 1- per 

 cent, to 3 per cent, of powdery ash. True bituminous 

 shales leave a massive ash varying from 75 per cent, to 

 about 15 per cent. Boghead leaves 21 f per cent. ; the top 

 shale of leeswood above 75. Besides these we have 

 questionable coal, leaving 10 per cent, or thereabouts of 

 ash in lumps that crumble easily. Referring to Cleggs' 

 table of the analysis of 198 varieties of British coal, I 

 find 24 containing between 5 and 10 per cent, of ash ; 

 21 between 3 and 5 per cent. Only two contain as much 

 as 10 per cent., 9 contain less than 1 per cent., and 119 

 from 1 to 3 per cent. 



I state these figures because they have an important 

 bearing on the interesting question of the origin or 

 formation of coal. They demolish at once the prevailing 

 theory that a coal seam is simply an ancient forest or a 

 woodland marsh that has been submerged and buried 

 where it stood. 



No siich forest, no such marshy woodland as we see so 

 prettily displayed in the fancy pictures of the vegetation 

 of the coal period could be formed without soil for the 

 roots of the calamites, the sigilarije, the lepidodendra, 

 the stigmaria^ the ferns, &c., to grow in. A single 

 generation of such reeds and trees, if thus buried i7i situ, 

 would form but a few inches of coal ; to produce a seam, 

 many generations piled one above another are required, 

 and each demands a soil. Conifera, such as described, 

 cannot grow one on the top of another, nor in the purely 

 vegetable soil formed by the decay of their ancestors. 



The quantity of ash contained in our most abundant 

 coals leaves absolutely nothing to represent the soil. The 

 averace amount of incombustible ash contained in the 

 roots, stems, and leaves of forest trees, shrubs, and her- 

 baceous plants is actually in excess of that found in ordi- 

 nary coal. Dried ferns contain above SJ per cent, of such 

 ash ; the leaves of beetroot (the ash of which is commer- 

 cially used in the manufacture of potash) contains lOi 

 per cent. Forest trees taken bodily, wood and leaves, 

 vary from 1 to 6 per cent., the leaves always containing 

 the most. Compare the ash left by a burnt cigar with 

 that of a similar weight of coal when all the carbon is 

 fairly burnt away. The calamites of coal measures repre- 

 sented by our " horse-tails " and " mare's-tails " have a 

 siliceous scale armour, are exceptionally rich in ash. I 

 have made microscopic preparations of these by burning 

 a piece of the stem, and transferring the siliceous skele- 

 ton, without breaking it, to a glass slide, whereon it 

 displays very beautifully the structure of the plant. 

 Dried stems of such reeds are sold under the name of 

 " Dutch rush," and used as natural files, for which pur- 

 pose they are qualified by their flinty cuticle. I am 

 unable to find any record of an analysis which gives the 



