CHAPTER LX 



THE OEIGIN OF COAL 



"/^OAL is a fuel of inestimable value. By the 

 V-^ heat which it develops in burning it gives 

 movement to divers machines. It makes the locomo- 

 tive move over the iron rails and the steamship trav- 

 erse the ocean. With its aid metals are worked, 

 fabrics woven, pottery is baked, glassware manufac- 

 tured, newspapers and books are printed, tools are 

 shaped, and all sorts of instruments necessary to our 

 daily activities are produced. The arts and crafts 

 have no more powerful auxiliary. If we had to sub- 

 stitute the heat of wood for that of coal, our forests 

 would prove insufficient. 



"What, then, is the origin of this combustible, 

 which feeds an immense industry and is the source 

 of incalculable riches? Ordinarily a piece of coal 

 has no great interest for the eye. It is black, lus- 

 trous, formless, friable, without any definite char- 

 acter to afford us instruction. One can learn more 

 from the fragments of refuse rejected by the miner 

 as too poor in carbon, fragments in which the pre- 

 dominating element is a kind of dark stone that 

 splits in sheets. In these a surprise is lurking that 

 will tell us the secret of coal. 



"These laminate blocks, stone rather than coal, 



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