The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1875-04-25
iCommunieAted.l
Coal.

And the Lord spoke all these words.
For in six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, and the sea and all things that are in
them, and rested on the seventh day: there
fore the Lord blessed the seventh day and sane
titled it. Exodus, g. 20, and IL.
In order to set at paught the above plain
statement of the creation of the world given
to us by the Creator HIMSELF through the
agency of Moses, in Exodus, philosophers have
devised numerous theories and formed systems
to establish the unreasonable age of our planet
and the countless lapse of time through which
animals and vegetables are supposed to have
existed.
Button supposed the earth to be q portion of
the sun struck off from that 1uminary by the
collision of a comet, and that when it assumed
its present form it was one liquid mass of fire
DR.. Hitchcock says, "that the time has been
when the earth existed as molten mass of
matter" and DIR. auckland says THAT the
whole materials of the globe may have been in
fluid or even in a nebular or gaseous state
from the presence of intense heat"
But the bases of all modern geological theo-
ries about the formation of the earth are those
of Hutton aud Warner. The Wernerian system
suPPoses that the surface of our globe present.
ed at one time chaotic mass, in which the
materials that compose it's solid parts were
held in solution by water, and by chemical
attraction certain portions of these materials
formed an aggregate mass of crystals, which,
consolidating, were preoiPitated, and formed
our present class of rocks.
The hypothesis of Hutton Is that our preaent
world is but one OF an indefinite series of
worlds which existed in time past that Sv
the action Of internal heat the strata deposited
at the bottom of the ocean from the debris of
a former world were fused, and finally, nv this
internal heat, raised, and in the act of cooling
consolidated into the compact stratum of
mountain-Iocks.
But the absurdity of supposing coal to be an
sGneous or an aqueous rock, has compelled
modern chemists and geologists to ascribe its
origin to the vegetable world-just az the
writer in Chambers has done in the article on
Sawdust," in your last number.
60 To form coal beds, vegetable matter ia sun.
posed to accumulate in some dense forest for
many years, perhaps for many ages then this
forest becomes the bottom of gulf or lake. until
the vegetable matter is covered with dep6sit
from the water in which it is submerged, This
deposit, in the lapse of time, becomes a mass
of rock. Again the land is raised, aud covered
as before with vegetables; again submerged,
aud covered with another layer of rock and
this.atternating process is supposed to have
continued as often as there are beds of coal in
the district or ooal-fefd."
Or, The vegetable growth of an immense
surface probably carried together by currents,
has been engulfed and covered with mud and
sand, and was then subjected, under the ipfiu.
enCe of enormous pressure, and probably of an
elevated temperature, to those deoomposfup
agencies by which vegetable matter, when in
contact with moisture, is necessarily affected -
Under such circumstances wood is supposed to
be converted intOcOal by "the removal of most
of the Oxygin and some of the hydrogen of the
wood" ...s--,....-. 3. ...... |
In support of theae theories, biologists have
used every argument they could devise and