ON THE ORIGIN AND FORMATION OF COAL. 2o 



success has attended all trials of such fuel for the manufacture of illuminating gas. 

 To make illuminating gas requires hydrogen and free carbon in large proportions, 

 hence an oxygenated coal cannot give good illuminating gas. 



In addition to the above classes of coal we have Albert coal or Albertite, 

 Torbane coal or mineral, Ritchie mineral and the White River Coal of Colorado. 

 These several minerals of great value for gas purposes are more properly, like 

 bitumen, asphaltum or solidified petroleum, to be ranked as coals. They are true 

 hydro-carbons, forming a link in the sequence of Carboniferous minerals of which 

 rock oil, petroleum and naphtha form different qualities, the other end of the 

 carbon scale being Diamond, Graphite or Plumbago and Carboniferous Shale. 



The formation of coal and the manner in which this mineral fuel under 

 whatever shape we find it, has been deposited among stratified rocks is yet an 

 unsolved problem. Though the coal measures of the world have for over a 

 century, been studied and examined, and many well ctablished points have 

 been developed, it is as yet an unsolved problem of peculiar difficulty. 



Some eminent geologists have established theories and argued on hypothesis 

 founded on known present conditions of temperature, atmosphere and elemental 

 action, thinking that all past processes and agents must, in the primeval age of 

 the earth have been as now of like amount and effect. Others, however, with 

 whom your lecturer agrees, consider that the past state and condition of the 

 earth were very different from those of our present age, and found their reasons 

 on scientific and geological facts no less evident than those holding their opinions 

 from the deduction of the former theories. Altogether, the disagreement be- 

 tween the two classes is much in excess of their agreement on many undisputed 

 points. We will now give an outline of a few of the more prominent theories of 

 the formation of coal beds : 



First — The Drift or Raft theory. 



This supposes that in those geological ages such as the Devonian, Carbon- 

 iferous, Permian and Tertiary ages; the majority of the vegetation of the 

 earth grew in wet swamps or low shores of lakes and rivers, or in the low lands 

 of those periods ; that this vegetation, torn loose and transported or drifted by 

 waves and currents into shallows of the sea, or in lakes, was deposited on the 

 bottom, thus forming, by continued additions, our present coal beds. All this 

 presuming that vegetable matter thus sunk would not decay, and that the mud 

 which invariably accompanies such drifting material would not mix with the 

 submerged woody matter. 



The advocates of this theory pointed triumphantly to the present immense 

 accumulation of wood formed at this day in the delta of the Mississippi, and 

 the Red River raft accumulation still increasing. If this theory were true, 

 and the age of the delta of the Mississippi is as some claim, over 30,000 years; 

 the first deposits of the delia would be "lignites." So far none have been found 

 at the surface or by boring down hundreds of feet. This theory is now obsolete. 



