156 COAL AND COAL-FORMATIONS. 



graphites and anthracites burning like charcoal, without 

 smoke or flame; the ordinary bituminous coals burning with 

 varying degrees of smoke and flame j the lignites burning 

 with stifling odour, and expelling much watery vapour and 

 smoke ; and the peats scarcely combustible till dried in the 

 sun or by hydraulic pressure, and then burning with little 

 flame but with much smoke and their own peculiar odour. 

 But whatever their peculiarities in these respects, they are 

 all highly important substances, and stand along with iron 

 as the most valuable that human industry obtains from the 

 crust of the earth. Indeed, the coals are altogether indis- 

 pensable to modern civilisation, the peculiar mechanical 

 phases of which are mainly of their own creating. So long 

 as man depends upon the forests for his fuel, his mastery 

 over the metals is limited, and his mechanical appliances 

 restricted. But when he has once learned the uses of coal, 

 and can obtain it in fair supplies, his metal-working powers 

 expand, and his forges, factories, steam-engines, steam- 

 ships, gas-works, railroads, and electric telegraphs become 

 the necessary developments of this new acquirement. Once 

 acquainted with these and similar appliances, man takes his 

 stand on a higher platform, gains new ascendancy over the 

 forces of nature, and overcomes in a great measure the ob- 

 stacles which time and space oppose to his operations. 



Where and at what time man first began to employ coal 

 as a fuel is unknown. The Chinese and Japanese have 

 evidently been long acquainted with its uses, but their 

 chronology is uncertain. The Hindoos, Egyptians, and 

 other Oriental nations never seem to have searched for 

 any variety of mineral coal, but laboriously prepared wood- 

 charcoal for their metallurgical processes. The Greeks and 

 Komans were acquainted with its properties, though they 

 appear to have seldom employed it, and this on the most 



