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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by J. Horgan, Jr. 



BRKAK^E BOYS AT LUNCH TIME 



In the days before child-labor laws began to mean something, such youngsters as these 

 spent most of the years of their minority in the breakers picking slate. But now they are in 

 school and older boys and men must do the work. But at that, many a breaker-boy of the 

 past is now a successful business man. 



coal itself and through the slate above. 

 With this evidence, can it be doubted that 

 trees grew in the coal-forming age ? And 

 when you find petrified ferns and shells 

 above and below the coal, and evidences 

 of them in the coal when placed under a 

 powerful microscope, can you doubt that 

 plants were existent, or that there was 

 animal life on the earth in that era ! 



And when you discover sandstone and 

 slate placed in exactly the same position as 

 sand and silt deposited by rivers upon the 

 floor of the continental shelves of the sea, 

 can you doubt that this sandstone and slate 

 were once sand and silt submerged be- 

 neath the sea, especially since you find the 

 remains of all sorts of sea life in them? 



And, furthermore, when you find above 



the seam of coal and its overlying strata 

 another bed of clay, another seam of coal, 

 and other overlying strata, and above 

 them still another series, and yet another, 

 until there are as many as eighteen seams 

 of coal, with their attendant strata of 

 clay and slate and sandstone, is it possi- 

 ble for us to interpret Nature's message 

 otherwise than that there were eighteen 

 risings and sinkings above and beneath 

 the waves, eighteen crops of carbona- 

 ceous materials gathered, garnered, and 

 carbonized for our benefit? 



Yet these are but a few outstanding 

 passages in the amazing story Nature has 

 written for the seeker after the truth of 

 the geological story of coal. Those who 

 are able to understand the sermons that 



