514 Notices of Memoirs—British A ssociation— . 
attempted had had in view chiefly the various uses of coal, and had 
no pretensions to being scientific or philosophical, or indicative of the 
real nature of various coals; and our knowledge of that nature was so 
rudimentary and incomplete that no true classification was possible. 
Analyses of coal, too, had chiefly been made for users of coal, and the 
form which gave the information needed by one class of user might 
not be suitable for another; the geologists had hitherto for the most 
part been able to make use only of such analyses, and hence arose the 
lack of uniformity spoken of by Professor Lebour. All these analyses 
dealt with the products of the destruction of coal, not with the 
substances actually contained in it; though much work had been 
done in the endeavour to understand the nature of coal, very little 
progress had been made, and we knew little more than that coal 
contained two or three substances separable by different solvents, 
one of which seemed to be intimately connected with the coking 
properties of coal. The question of the ash of coal, raised by Professor 
Kendall, was a very important one, especially the separation of the 
inherent ash, or mineral matter originally contained in the plants 
from which the coal was derived, from the extraneous mineral matter, 
and also the distinction between ash irregularly distributed as ‘ dirt’, 
‘stone’, or ‘shale’ among the coal, and that found minutely sub- 
divided throughout it. Great variations occurred in the composition 
of the ash; it was usually a complex mixture of silicates, but he had 
had one sample which was practically a pure china clay, and another 
which contained over 80 per cent of ferric oxide. Analyses of 
ash, like those of coal, were usually made by chemists who were 
unacquainted with the geological features of the occurrence of the 
coals concerned; and the problems raised by the geologist could never 
be enlightened by the chemist unless the whole of the circumstances 
were put before him, and analyses made on the geologist’s own 
samples and for his own purposes. To do this completely, for 
a survey of all the coal-seams of the kingdom, will involve an 
enormous amount of labour, and will need not only hearty co-operation 
between chemists and geologists, but financial assistance on a scale 
that can hardly be furnished by any other body than the nation. 
Professor Bedson dealt briefly with the investigations which. had 
been made into the nature of the organic proximate constituents of 
coal. He drew attention to the reports of a committee of Section B 
published in the Transactions of the Association in 1894 and in 1896, 
and spoke of some of the more recent attempts to isolate the constituents 
of coal substances by the aid of solvents, amongst which pyridine and 
quinoline appear to be the most efficient. Although a considerable © 
amount of work has been done, still we are lacking exact information 
as to the chemical nature of the substances dissolved and the undissolved 
portions. 
Mr. D. Trevor Jones, speaking on behalf of Dr. R. V. Wheeler and 
himself, and dealing with the question of the constitution of coal 
from the chemical aspect, remarked that coal is considered to have 
been formed from decayed vegetable matter by the action of pressure 
and temperature. The temperature must have fallen short of 300° C. 
The coal conglomerate can be resolved by means of solvents into 
