River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1899-10-26
THE STORY OF COAL.
How Nature Produces This Most
Valuable of Fuels.
1t Required Ages for the Formation
and Development of the Beds
and Mines which Are Now
Being worked.
Especial Washington Letter

Among the geological collections at
the National museum there are speci-
mems of coal of every variety from every
part of the world. From one of the
scientific men of the National museum
the writer to-day learned many inter-
esting things concerning the black dia-
mond fuel.
The old man, who seemed to have
some accurate knowledge concerning
every stratum of the surface of the
earth, spoke of the history of the coal
beds in the different parts of the world
with as much familiarity as child dis
plays concerning the alphabet. The
histories of the various coal fields are
as \ Il C to him.
As the reluctant householder shovels
its regular stint of food into the greedy
NAV of the ogre in the cellar, other
wise known as the furnace, ii is a mar
yelous thing for him to consider that he
is keeping his dwelling warm by the
heat Of the suns rays which fell upon
the earth millions of years ago. The
solar orb of that vanished epoch, big
ger than it is to-day and hotter, brought
forth even in this latitude a tropical
vegetation of wonderful luxuriance
Plants of strange kinds grew up richly
from the clayey soil and formed dense
jung,es in the vast marshes which COW
cred large areas of the surface of this
planet. Ferns, MOSES and the leaves,
branches and trunks of trees fell and
decayed where they grew, only TO make
the soil more fertile and the next
growth richer and more luxuriant
Year after year, century after century,
the process of growth and decay went
on, until the beds of vegetable matter
thus deposited had reached great
thickness.
But the earth's body was still shrink
ing, and in consequence her crust at
times contracted and fell in. When il
did so, the land sank throughout vast
areas, these beds of vegetable matter
went down, and over the great marshes
the water swept again, bringing drift
vegetation from higher levels to add
to that already buried. Then over these
deposits the sand and mud and gravel
were laid up anew, and the clay soil
from which the next rich growth would
spring was spread out on the surface.
This process was repeated again and
again-as often, indeed, as seams of
coal in any coal bed. Thus the condi-
tions for the formation of coal were
made complete, atmospheric air being
entirely excluded while the vegetable
beds underwent the processes of decom-
position. These processes went on un-
der the water of the ocean, under the
sands of the shore, under the new de-
posits of succeeding ages, Transforming
the wood of the carboniferous era into
the coal of to-day.
Nature is still making coal, though,
unfortunately, not at a rate anything
like fast enough to make up for the
consumption of this product. The proc
esses may be watched from beginning to
end. For this purpose one must first
go to peat bed, which is simply an ac-
emulation of the remains OF plants
that grew and decayed on the spot
where they are now found. When the
upper LAYER of this material is removed
one finds peat with 50 to &c per cent
of carbon, and the deeper one goes the
better in quality it gets. 1t may be
cut out in blocks with sharp spades, the
water may be pressed from the blocks,
and they may be stacked up, covered
and dried and used for fuel. There is
a certain kind of moss called 'sphag-
num-" which in large part makes up the
peat-producing vegetation. Its roots
die annually, but from the living top
new roots are sent out each year. The
workmen who dig peat understand that
if this surface is destroyed the growth
of the bed must stop; so commonly they