The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-08-29

Curiosities of Coal,

From the San Francisco Chronicle, Aa,q. L.
Does any one except a practical chemist
ever stop to think of all the substances
which we get from pit coal, and the almost
inconeeivable variety of their use Every
body is familiar with those of them that are
in daily use such as gas, illuminating oils,
coke and paraffine, but of the greater part
few persons know even the names, science
advances so rapidly and its nomenclature
is ESQ extensive and so abstruse. 1t
is no wonder that merchants and
manufacturers take advantage of this ignor-
ance to foist upon the public articles of
food, of drink, or for tho toilet, if they are
not always dangerous to the health, have
not in them particle of the substances
which they pretend to contain. Though pit
coal has been known for some hundreds of
years, the discovery of its numberless prod
ucts is confined to the present century.
Illuminating gas was unknown hundred
years ago. Petroleum has been in use only
about forty years, and it is scarcely more
than fifty since some one discovered that
stone coal was infammable. Nearly
all the other products derived from soft
coal have been discovered and applied in
the interests of science or of fraud
within the last twenty five years. The
first thought in regard to coal is that it is
made to give heat or warmth; the next,
that one of its principal uses is to illumin-
ate But there are obtained from it the
means of producing more than 400 colors or
shades of color, among The chief of which
are saffron, violet-blue and indigo There
are also obtained q great variety OF per-
fumes-cinnamon, bitter almonds, queen of
the meadows, Glove, wintergreen, aniss,
camphor, thymol IA new French odor) vani-
line apd heliotropine. Some of these are
used for favoring. Among the explosive
agents whose discovery has been caused by
the war spirit of the last few years in Eur ope
are two called dinitrobe1zine, or belite, and
picrates.. To medicine coal has given hyp-
none, salicylic acid naphtol, phenol and
autipyrine. Benzine and naphthaline are
powerful insecticides. There have been
found in it ammonical saltsSusefu as fertili-
zers, tannin, saccharine 10 substitute for
sugar., the flavor of currants, raspberry
and pepper, pyrogalic acid and hydroqui-
none used in photography, and various sub
stances familiar or unfamiliar, such as tar,
rosin, asphaltum, lubricating oils, varnsh,
and the bitter taste of beer. By means of
some of these we can have wine without
the juice of the grape, beer without malt,
preserves without either fruit or sugar,
perfumes without flowers, and col
oring matters without the vegetable
or animal substances from which they
have been hitherto chiefly derived. What
is to be the eud of all thisl Are our coal
beds not only to warm and illuminate, but
to feed and quench the thirst or posterity
We know that they are the luxuriant vege-
tation of primal epochs stored and com
pressed in a way that has made them highly
convenient for transport and daily use
They are natures savings laid up for a
rainy day of her children, the human race,
and it is probably because they are com
posed Of tne trees, the foliage, the plants,
the roots, the fruits and the flowers of the
ancient world that they now so largely sup
ply the place of our forests, plains, fields
and gardens.