34 Dr. Meade's notice of the Tioga Coal. 



grains of nitre. Now as fifty grains of charcoal or of Kil- 

 kenny coal, which is nearly a pure carbon, would have been 

 sufficient for the same purpose, it follows, that seventy-five 

 grains of this coal contained only fifty grains of carbon ; the 

 remainder must of course have been bitumen and ashes. It 

 therefore appears, that 1 00 parts of Tioga coal, according to 

 experiment, contain only 66.7 parts of carbon ; approxima- 

 ting nearly in quality to the best English bituminous coal, 

 which averages from fifty-seven to seventy per cent, of car- 

 bon. Though it was not of much importance, yet I thought 

 proper to ascertain the quantity of bitumen which existed in 

 33.3 grains, the residue after deflagration. To determine 

 this, it was required only to ignite a certain portion of the 

 coal on a hot iron in the air, till nothing remained but the 

 ashes, the carbon and bitumen being entirely consumed. One 

 hundred grains of the coal, being treated in this manner with 

 sufficient heat, left a residuum of only 3.50 grains of brown 

 ashes. It would not have been difficult to ascertain the na- 

 ture of this earthy residuum, but as it was of little conse- 

 quence, in a practical or economical point of view, I omitted 

 it. We shall therefore now state the result of the above 

 analysis to be as follows : 



In 100 parts of coal, 

 Carbon - - - 66 7 



Bitumen ... 30 43 

 Earth ... 3 50 



100 00 

 It thus appears, that the Tioga coal is of an excellent qual- 

 ity, fully equal to the best Liverpool coal and fit for all the 

 purposes of manufactures, but requiring to be converted into 

 coak before it can be made use of in the smelting of iron 

 ore, or in many other processes in metallurgy and the arts. 

 This should be always kept in view, and is the principal dis- 

 tinction between it and the anthracite or non-bituminous 

 coal of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Each of them have 

 their distinctive and valuable qualities ; while the anthracites 

 consist nearly of from ninety to ninety-seven per cent, of pure 

 carbon, the Tioga coal contains only 66.7, the residue being 

 chiefly bitumen, a substance which renders it extremely valu- 

 able in domestic use, and in the reverberatory furnaces, but 

 inapplicable to many other purposes, which the experienced 

 artist can easily comprehend. 



