CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 



WHAT SHALL WE DO WHEN THE COAL, OIL, AND GAS 

 ARE GONE? 



If coal, oil, and gas were suddenly taken away, all the 

 nations would become poor and many of their industries 

 would cease. Just think for a moment of the amount of 

 work these things do for us and what an effort there would 

 be made to find something to take their place ! 



Wood once formed the chief fuel. It was used only to 

 cook our food or to keep us warm. Now fuel is required 

 for so many different purposes that with the decrease of the 

 forests wood has been found insufficient. 



Peat is one of those substances that has been used in 

 parts of Europe to take the place of wood, but it is 

 used so little in our own country that many have never 

 seen it. 



Peat is dug from bogs or marshes. We might say that 

 a peat marsh is the beginning of a coal bed. Peat is the 

 partly decayed vegetation which has slowly accumulated 

 in wet places. In the colder countries it is formed largely 

 of moss and similar water-loving plants, but where the 

 climate is warm other kinds of marsh vegetation, and even 

 trees, aid in forming peat. Sometimes floods bring earth 

 and deposit it in the marshes, in which case the peat is less 

 suitable for fuel, but forms a rich and productive soil in- 

 stead. 



In many of the vast swamps of long ago, when there were 

 no men nor even the higher animals upon the earth, vege- 

 tation grew very rank. It is believed that at that remote 

 time the air contained more carbonic acid, a substance 



