88 



SCIENCE. 



joyous times in camp ; the meat is disposed of first' 

 and then the younger people engage in various games' 

 while the older ones gather around some aged crone? 

 vho excitedly recounts the hunts of her girlhood days. 

 )lentifully intermixing stray portions of the old sagas 

 and legends with which her memory is replete. Thus 

 they live from day to day, the men hunting and the 

 women stretching the skins, till the season comes 

 around when they must return to the coast. Happy, 

 contented, vagabond race ! no thought of the morrow 

 disturbs the tranquility of their minds. 



When a deer is killed any distance from camp, the 

 meat is cached, with the intention of returning after it 

 in winter ; but with what the wolves and foxes devour 

 and what the Eskimo never can find again, very little 

 is brought back. 



Many have now firearms of some pattern or other ; 

 and though they will hunt for a ball that has missed 

 its mark for half a day, they do not hesitate to fire at 

 any useless creature that comes in their way. Those 

 that have no guns use bows and arrows made from 

 reindeer antlers. Sometimes the deer are driven into 

 ponds, and even into the salt water, and captured in 

 kyacks with harpoons. 



( Continued.) 



COAL. 



By P. W. Shkafek, M. E., Pottsville, Pa. 



I. 



Coal is monarch of the modern industrial world, 

 with its wonderfully diversified interests, and their ever 

 expanding development. But supreme as is this more 

 than kingly power at the present time, comparatively 

 brief as has been the period of its supremacy, and 

 unlimited, in the popular apprehension, as are its ap- 

 parent resources, yet already can we calculate its 

 approximate duration and predict the end of its all- 

 powerful but beneficent reign. This is especially the 

 case with our limited Anthracite ; the more widely 

 diffused bituminous having in reserve a much longer 

 term of service — short indeed as a segment of the 

 world's history, but so long, compared with an aver- 

 age human life, as to be of slight practical concern to 

 the present generation. 



The territory occupied by the anthracite coal fields 

 of Pennsylvania is but a diminutive spot compared 

 with the area of bituminous coal in Pennsylvania 

 alone, to say nothing of its vast extent in other por- 

 tions of the United States, and m Greal Britain, 

 France and Belgium. The area oi th< anthracite of 

 the United States is but 470 squan miles nol one- 

 twentieth the size of Lake Erie, while the wide spread 

 bituminous coal fields cover twice th( area "I <m four 

 great lakes : the anthracite making bul an insignifi- 

 canl showing on the map of the continent Bui the 

 comparison with the bituminous area is d( 1 l ptiv< . un 

 less the relative thickness of the two is taken into 



consideration. If the anthracite beds were spread 

 out as thinly as those of the bituminous region they 

 would cover eight times their present area, or 3,780 

 square miles. And, again, if the denuded spaces 

 within the borders of the anthracite coal fields were 

 covered with a deposit of coal as thick as we may 

 justly suppose they once were, and as the remaining 

 still are, the available area would be increased to 

 about 2,000 square miles, or 1,280,000 acres; equal 

 to a coal deposit of 92,840,960,000 tons. 



Contemplating the number and extent of the coal 

 beds, a total thickness of 107 feet, distributed in fif- 

 teen workable beds, interstratified with a full mile in 

 thickness of rock and shale, we are ley; in wonder at the 

 luxuriant growth of tropical plants 1 red to pro- 

 duce this vast amount of compressed fuel, and the 

 mighty processes of nature by which it was placed in 

 its present position. The ingenuity of scientists is taxed 

 to account for this wonderful accumulation of fuel, 

 once Vegetable, now mineral ; once waving in fresh 

 green beauty on the surface of the earth, now buried 

 under hundreds of feet of solid rock ; once growing 

 in a level deposit of mud so plastic that the lightest 

 leaflet dropping on its surface, left its impress ; now 

 the mud hardened into slate, and the rank vegetation 

 changed to hard and glittering coal, rising and falling 

 in geologic hills and valleys, surpassing in number, 

 depth, extent, sharpness of flexure and acuteness of 

 angle, anj thing visible in the light of upper day. 



Some slight idea of the growth of these ancient forests 

 may be gained from the computation that to form only 

 one of these large beds of coal required a deposit of 

 vegetable matter perhaps one hundred feet in thick- 

 ness. What shall we say then to the amount of veg< 

 tation stored away in the mammoth bed which ex- 

 tends through all three of the anthracite coal fields, 

 covering an area of 300 square miles, with an average 

 thickness oi~ twenty feet, and containing, it is esti- 

 mated, 6,000,000,000 tons of coal. 



Not less wonderful and interesting than the coal 

 deposits is the grand floor of conglomerate which un- 

 derlies them j a vast sheet of rock, infinitely old, com- 

 posed of fragments of other rocks infinitely older, 

 bound together by an almost imperceptible cement 

 which holds them so firmly that gunpowder will sc arcely 

 separate them. Whence came this great sea of peb- 

 bles, water rounded and water-borne to their present 

 resting place ? We find them now as the current has 

 dropped them — masses of silex as large as ten-pound 

 cannon balls, and almost as round, so shapely have 

 they been worn by the action of some ancient current. 

 These were deposited first, and then, in regular order, 

 trending to the southwest, came sizes graduated down 

 to those of a pea and grains of sand. 



This more than marble floor bears few saurian foot 

 prints; scarcely an impress of bird or beast or fish, 

 or sign of animal life. Nothing but a bed of almost 

 pure silica; a solid foundation on which to build up 

 the mass of rock and the fossil fuel that we call an- 

 thracite, older than the hills and predestined for the 

 use of coming man. 



The pebble-laden flood ceased, and was followed 

 by placid waters and gentle currents, bringing fine mud 

 and silt to cover the rocky bed. Then the waters 

 drained away, or the land rose, until lit for vegetable 

 life, it was covered with the mighty flora of the car- 



