The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1882-05-04
Whore CoaI Comes From.

The coal fire i'm the CRATE sparkled
and cracked and sent IFS sharp-pointcd
flames up through the dark mass giV-
ing even the smoke lurid hue, .....
We all sat gazing into the nre, max
ing fancies and thinking our own
thoughts, when Uncle John interrupt
ed the silence by saying;
i" And so, at last, this coal fulflls its
mission. " EHHH
What do you mean, uncleP' in
quired Julia, who sat on her low stool,
leaning her face on Uncle Johns knee,
and smoothing the tabby cat pretty fur.
"Why. / mean that after SO many
long years, this coal has at last become
an agent for the use and comfort Of
man. Perhaps you do not know how
coal is formedP'
We all drew our chairs nearer as
Julia exclaimed: "Do tell us. "
"Well," began Uncle John, siroking
his long white beard, "many thousand
years ago, in fact, more years th;m any
of you can count even in whole life
time, there grew n vast forest. There
were no North and South American
Continents, nor even an Eastern and
Western World. An exceedingly small
portion of the globe was land, the rest
was wide. sea. In many places the
ocean was shallow, and as years went
by the sand and drift matter filled up
the shallow places, until they became
great swanps. In these swamps grew
great forests.
Tho great amount OF carbonic acid
gas that mingled with the air. and the
high degree of warmth, along with the
constant moisture, caused these forests
to grow very rapidly. The pine trees
grew TO immense size; ferns grew rs
bfr-t, n ,rf Of ftift
that in our forests never grows over
three feet high, in those forests grew
eighty and ninety feet high.
Along the damp, warm valley Of tll
Amazon, in South America, and iu the
tropics, grow our richest and most pro-
fuse vegetation, but even that IS nOlh-
ing compared TO the ancient forests that
grew from the swamps. In these for
ests the trees and vegetation grew so
rapidly that they crowded upon each
other Being too much crowded, much
of the vegetation died down as rapidly
as il had grown Thus, year after year
the old forest died down, and above IL
grew the new, until one forest was piled
upon another.
+" After thousands Of years, gradually
the whole surface Of the land begun 10
sink, until the sea once more flowed
over the place where forests had grown.
And, again, after more thousands Of
years, the drift matter and sand again
filed up the shallow places, and other
forests grew in new swamps. As years
went by, they, too, were submerged in
the sea. This continued for numbcrless
years. Between each layer Of decayed
forests there was q layer Of sand and
mud and shells and drift matter that
finally hardened into rock, forming The
fs tr.
our coal mines Miners can tell inst
how many times the coal beds have becn
submerged by the number of layers OF
sandstone or limestone.
Most of the trees Of that ancient
forest were pine trees. Pine contains
tar and pitch and a great deal of rcsih-
Gus matter Coal also contains tar md
pitch and rosin, which it received from
the decayed pine Coal is pure carbon,
and IL black because carbon Is black
All plants contain great deal Of car
bOnic acid. When plants breathe or
decay they give of large quantities Of
carbOnic acid gas, hence, this carbon
becomes a part Of the coal.
''The constant pressure above, and
the water, caused this decaying fegeta-
ton to take first the form Of peat. Pest
is "A soft, spOngy sort Of coal, and IL is
much used by the poor yeOnlanry Of
England and Ireland for their fires.
After the peat has lain many thousands
Of years under great pressure and
deeply buried in the dark bosom " The
earth. il gradually and slowly nard0ns
into the coal we use in our CRATE.
s.Somctimcs, in splitting open a block
of coal, you can plainly see the impress
Of beautiful and perfectly formed leaves,
branches and twigs aud vines. Our
coal is really, then, nothing but de-
cayed forest II has only been within
the last few years that coal has come IN
to extensive use in Europe and the
United States Not until the timber of
the forests was fast disappearing did
coal come into demand, and yet b. has
been stored away in measureless abun-
dance generations before we were
born"
We were all gazing into the blazing
fire that burned 50 brightly rs TO pain
the eyes. julia said it seemed 20 be
trying 10 make as much light as pos
sible. i'm order To make mp for having
been SO long in the dark.--M T. 1ri-
Junc.