COALS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 171 
Solms-Laubach.' The different ratio of soluble to insoluble 
alumina in the coal ashes to that i in aes roofs and floor appears to 
coincide with this view, as if this e ad been assimilated 
by the plants we may readily iain that it would remain more 
easily soluble than that which had not been subjected to such 
Sir Robert Kane’ in some analyses of the ashes of peat gives— 
Alumina sos Ol?” STE Tee 
Sand and iiniabise tiingteible'4 inacids 2°17 2:10 7°68 
a in the first two of these, even if the whole insoluble matter 
as alumina, which is unlikely, the ratio of soluble to insoluble 
ponies be high. Some of the results obtained from peat ashes by 
Messrs. Kane and Sullivan® point in the same direction. 
In none of the published analyses of coal ashes that I have seen 
are the portions soluble and insoluble in acid analysed separately. 
The eres have evidently been made either by direct fusion with 
carbonates (or by treatment with hydrofluoric — or by 
rsecaasin with hydrochloric acid without further examination of 
the insoluble residue. Neither of these methods could show the 
lve, in 
slowness although solution may ultimately be complete. In the 
extensive series of analyses of British argillaceous iron ores 
from the coal measures by Messrs. Dick and Spiller given by Dr. 
Perey, most of which have been made by the double method, it 
is observable that in not a single instance does the soluble alumina 
i r on 
bottom in the deeper parts of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans*, 
Fete seam that the red ‘tae there found is an organic deposit, being 
@ residue of the globigerina ooze from which the carbonate of 
calcium has been removed by solution, and suggests that all or 
Many clays may be of similar o Church, on the other 
hand, r regards this red clay as an oxidation product of glauconite, 
So 2 Sark, d Premidered by Eireabens: te come 
2 TR Ch. Pharm., ¢., 297. 
4he industrial Resources of Ireland, 
* Report on the Nature and Process of coger Fo Destructive Distillation of Peat, 
to the Commissioner for Woods, 1851. 
Netig 4a Metallurgy, Iron and a 210 to 220 (1864). 
. = ‘ Xxili 32 
® Chem. News, xxxi, 199. ue 
