NATIONAL POWER AND COAL 163 
astonishing is the quantity of their substance in our Coal 
Measures, that the idea has got about that the plants 
or the atmosphere, or both, of those times, must have 
been unique in their coal-forming power. And this 
“view has been fostered by the natural configuration of 
Western Europe. In this country our important com- 
mercial coals are of Coal Measure (paleozoic) age, 
and in Germany, Belgium and Northern France also 
this is. true. In Germany, where more recent coals 
are also valuable, they are all ‘lignites,’” or ‘‘ brown 
coals,” and hence appear to support the view of the 
exceptional black-coal forming conditions of the Coal 
Measures. 
Without going beyond our own empire we can dis- 
cover how fallacious is this view; and true black coals 
are to be found in almost every geological period in 
some part of the world or other. For instance, the 
assumption that Tertiary or Cretaceous coals are all 
lignites or brown coal (and therefore of little value) is 
disproved by the great coalfields of true bituminous 
coal, and even anthracites in Western Canada. While 
in Eastern Asia, one of the greatest storehouses of coals 
in the world, vast deposits of true black coal are of this 
geologically recent age. 
Even where the Tertiary coals are still in the brown- 
coal stage, they are of great commercial value if intelli- 
gently utilised, and this the Germans, who have such 
large stocks of brown coal, have been wise enough to 
do. The brown coals also are mummified plant masses, 
in most instances entirely comparable with black coals, 
save that they contain more moisture and are less com- 
pressed and consolidated. As wise old Goeppert 
