﻿CURRENT LITERATURE 



BOOK REVIEWS 

 Books on coal 



In view of the increasing importance of the botanical sciences in connection 

 with the fundamental problems, a general statement in regard to the status 

 of plants in relation to coal will not be without interest to the readers of this 

 journal. Taking first the conservational aspect of the subject, the results of 

 the geological congress held in 1913 in Toronto, Canada, have appeared in three 

 magnificent quarto volumes and a large folio atlas. 1 



Although the coal resources of the world are still abundant and exhaustion 

 is in general hundreds of years in the future, still, prudent exploitation of the 

 coal fields is necessary. The account of the coal resources of the various coun- 

 tries of the world are given authoritatively by their geological surveys and 

 bureaus of mines. It is particularly fortunate that this should have happened 

 before the great war has exacerbated international relations to such an extent 

 that cooperation of the kind manifested in this gigantic work is for a long time 

 to come impossible. The summary of the results is made by members of the 

 Geological Survey of Canada. Of particular interest to North Americans is 

 the enormous richness of our coal resources, which, if we include both the United 

 States and Canada, are nearly twice as great as all of the rest of the world 

 combined. In view of the absolutely fundamental relation of coal to modern 

 industrial development the significance of the statistical situation for the north- 

 ern America continental area can scarcely be overestimated. 



The most important recent work on the historical aspects of coal investi- 

 gation is unquestionably that of Stevenson. 2 The author has had prolonged 

 personal experience in connection with the coal deposits of the eastern United 

 States, and has visited a number of the more interesting European formations. 

 The summary of the literature on the subject is admirable, and enables one 

 to realize what an enormously large amount of scientific effort has been 

 expended on the investigation of coal during the past hundred years or more. 

 Two main hypotheses of coal formation have held the ground during that 

 period, namely the autocthonous or in situ hypothesis, which attributes to 

 coal the same conditions of formation as ordinary peat; and the allocthonous 

 or transport hypothesis, which regards coal as a sedimentary rock formed in 



1 The coal resources of the world. Toronto: Morang&Co. Ltd. 1913- **S °°' 

 1 Stevenson, J. J.., Formation of coal beds. Lancaster (Penn.) : New Era Printing 

 Co. 1911-1913. «3-5o. 



