SALTER — A CHRISTMAS LECTURE ON COAL. 
235 
The chloride of lime was employed by Hoffmann to test the portions 
as they passed over ; the aniline giving a fine violet colour, while the 
leucol did not. 
The aniline must be crystallized with sulphuric acid to obtain the 
colour ; and the process is thus given in lire's Dictionary, from Mr. 
Perkins' account, in brief. 
" Dissolve equivalent portions of sulph. aniline and bichrom. of 
potash in water ; mix, and let stand for several hours. Filter, and 
wash and dry the black precipitate. Digest this in coal-tar naptha to 
extract a brown resinous substance ; and finally digest with alcohol 
to dissolve out the colouring matter, which is left behind on distilhng 
the spirit, as a coppery friable mass." 
To use it, add a strong solution in alcohol to a boiling solution of 
oxalic acid, and apply when cold to the fabric to be dyed. 
But even this is not the last of the coal-miracles. Teetotal 
advocates may keep watch over every gi^ain of barley ; but, alas ! 
we can get alcohol from boghead coal. I never tasted it, nor wish 
to taste it ; but I understand it is yet more sleepy stuff than that 
from the upper regions. Hequiescat in pace. 
" There is no end," says Mr. Binney, " to the combinations, solid, 
liquid, and gaseous, which belong to the chemistry of coal. Who 
shall say these bodies do not change, the one into the other, under 
various circumstances ?" What may we not learn from their inves- 
tigation regarding the laws — nay, perhaps, even the constitution of 
matter? And all that is true of coal and its products may be said — 
leaving a wide margin — for peat and other fossil fuels. They have 
the same constituent parts, and are among the best of our earthly 
treasures, although we have sadly wasted them before we knew their 
value.* 
Light, heat, motion, fragrance, and colour — all from coal ! What 
more could the sun himself do for us ? Is the heat from below the 
same with that from above ? Robert Stephenson used to say so, and 
when he saw one of his own locomotives tearing away at the rate of 
forty miles an hour, would call out, half in fun and half in earnest, 
" There goes the bottled sunshine." 
An acquaintance of mine, who knows coal mines well, gives me the 
same idea in heroic verse : — 
" 'Tis the old sun's heab 
That now cooks our meat ; 
'Tis is his bottled up beam 
That gets up our steam." 
Stephenson was right. It is the light and heat of former daj^s 
expended in converting carbonic acid and water into coal that is here 
stored up for man. He can, by again converting coal into carbonic 
* Even anthracite was regarded in America, fifty years ago, as incombustible 
refuse, and thrown away. In 1316, or a httle later, it was made a capital offence 
to bum coal : one man, in Edward Ist's reign, was actually hung for it 
