Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1902-07-02
BOTTLED SUNSHINE.
NATURES GREAT FACTORY IN WHICH
is PRODUCED COAL.
A Lump of the Mineral Tells It's In
teresting Million Year History In
Few Words-A Wonderful Proc
ess of Evolution,

Lump of the Mineral Tells Its In
terestins Million Year History In
o Few Words-A Wonderful Proc
ess of Evolution.
Your life to mine is as second to
thousand years. I will let you know
that in my time have seen such sights
ns would make you gasp in astonish-
ment Once, in untold ages past long
before man had appeared on this old
world, was alive. Yes, the dirty old
piece of coal was living thing in those
dim, distant ages. A thing of beauty,
too-a thing to be admired. l was a
fern. Not such q paltry thing as you
decorate your homes with and grow in
little earthenware affairs. My trunk
alone measured five feet across.
Yet was nothing out of the ordinary.
In those days there were many little
plants forty feet or SO in height. Ev-
cry bit of coal you toss about in such
needless fashion once was living
plant-a plant which grew and -four
ished, even as your plants of today
grow and flourish. But in these de-
generate days plants are poor, feeble
little things. Plants were plants in
those days. We had no petted and
pampered ferns. I'VE had no houses Of
glass, artifcially kept warm so that
the poor little dears shouldn't get cold.
Those were the days Of real ferns, of
healthy ferns free from all newfangled
nonsense about fertilizers and soils and
aspects and such childish weaknesses.
In those early days the earth was not
as 1t is today. 1t was hotter, for 1t
had cooled from globe of molten rock.
Its atmosphere was heavy with warm
vapors; close and oppressive, you would
call it, but it just suited us, Us we grew
and luxuriated in it The earth's crust
was thin and heayed about, gradually
raising vast continents from the bed of
the sea and slowly. dragging others
deep into the ocean. It was time of
vast changes.
I grew on the muddy banks of great
pool of water, which was fed by slug
gish streams and bordered by mon
strous reeds. On the other side stretch
ed vast swamp and dark forest of
tangled vegetation. For hundreds Of
miles there was no break to this forest
beyond few boys and pools of brackish
water. The sun shone hot upon me, SO
no wonder l grew well in this humid
atmosphere. Then there were frightful
storms. when mighty trees were flung
down and swept by floods to the bottom
of the pool. This had gone on ages be-
fore appeared above ground; 1t went
on ages after. The result was that the
bottom of the pool was mass of fallen
trees. The newly felled trees pressed
on the bottom ones, and after thou
sands of years the water, the mud. the
heat and the pressure turned the
mighty beds of vegetable matter into
what you call coal.
In the dense forest 1t YVES somewhat
the same. Trees were thrown down
by hurricanes; fresh ones grew and fell
victims to storms. So 1t went on for
long centuries until the last forest grew
on the top of great thickness of bur-
led trees, ferns and MOSES. Amid this
exuberant vegetation were many fan
tastic and uncouth animals. Round
about me they made the forest resound
with their hideous bellowings. They
were so strangely shaped that l could
not well describe them to you. Even
some OF the files had wings half a foot
long from tip to tip.
one day saw commotion in the
midst of the lake far away from me.
the bed rose up and belched forth
steam and ashes and molten rock. In
the years that followed the fluid rock
rolled down the sides of the volcano