24 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



I think this is a misnomer which tends generally to cause many scientists east to 

 condemn our coal for certain purposes, or even as a good fuel for heating purposes, 

 from the misleading nature of this conventional name. Being found only in the 

 Cretaceous and Tertiary formations lying at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, 

 the first explorers of our Western Territories educated to compare our products, 

 our minerals and our geological formaiions with European examples, and finding 

 that in the Cretaceous and Tertiary formations of Europe, all mineral fuel found 

 there, exhibited but a very slight change from the condition of woody fibre, and 

 affording but an inferior fuel at the best, which is called there "lign.te," or 

 " brown coal," they jumped at the conclusion that all our recent coals are noth 

 ing but "lignites," and therefore they cannot yield a good fuel fit for all the pur- 

 poses to which coal can be applied. 



I am happy, however, to s ate to my hearers that this assumption is for the 

 most part gratuitous, and not founded upon strict fact or experience. Our coal 

 formations at the east base of the Rocky Mountains are found immediately fol- 

 lowing the end of the Cretaceous formations, having been uplifted and subjected 

 to intense pressure vertically and horizontally and to heat also ; the original form 

 of the simple deposits of vegetable matter, whether as peat or as annual plants or 

 forest trees, or a mixture of ail these together, have undergone full as great a 

 change in quality as the coals of the so-called true coal measures or even the An- 

 thracite of Pennsylvania, in other words we can call it a " Metamorphic coal." 



For convenience, a division of mineral coals has been proposed, into three 

 classes: " Hydrogenated" or "Coking Coals;" "Oxygenated" or "Non- 

 Coking Coals" and " Hydrated Coals." Hydrogenated coals are such as form 

 "coke" when properly heated in ovens, and derive this property from the pres- 

 ence of a large percentage of hydrogen ; yet, if eight or ten per cent, of oxygen 

 is present besides, it loses this quality. Pennsylvania and Ohio bituminous coals 

 with Illinois coals form, in all cases good coke. Anthracite and our Rocky 

 Mountain coal are not coking, while the Permian and Jurassic coal of Virginia is 

 not only coking coal, but from the presence of intruded dikes of trap rock some 

 of the beds are changed into natural coke. 



Oxygenated coals, to which our Rocky Mountain coals belong, although 

 affording an excellent fuel, yet, cannot be transformed into coke or pure carbon, 

 for abounding in volatile ingredients the coal burns freely, but does not melt 

 together and cake up as the hydrogenated coals uniformly do. 



The term, "hydrated coals" is given to some varieties of mineral fuel that 

 contain a large percentage of water. Even the anthracite of New England has. 

 been found to contain up to fifteen per cent, of water. Our Rocky Mountain 

 coals, especially those that have not been exposed fully to heat and pressure, and 

 found away from the mountains, contain a much larger amount of hygroscopic 

 water than those we find uplifted and altered by internal heat. 



That our coals in Colorado with the exception of Trinidad, and Gunnison 

 River and White River coal, are all oxygenated coals is one reason why so little 



