Iowa state bystander. [volume] (Des Moines, Iowa) 1894-1916, 1914-05-29
EACTS ABOUT GOAL ]
Geological Survey Makes Public
Some interesting Data.
Report Shows Why There 10 Resin
In Hsat.Produesr and Why Steam
Boats Blew Up-Peat the
Mother Substance.

Washington.-To the head OF the
family who has been shoveling coal
during the long winter It matters not
what his coal lie made from as long
as 1t gives q reasonable amount OF
heat and Is paid for. And yet this
question of the ingredient matter and
the geologic processes OF peat from
which coal is formed is considered so
important by those who are not sim
ply shovelers OF coal that the United
States geological survey, through d.
vid White, has made a study of the
subject of the effects of resins in
Goals. Resins, under which is includ-
ed the resin Of commerce, the copal
from which varnish is made, the am
Der used in jewelry, and many other
similar materials, are secretions gen.
Grated in some of the cells or vessels
in plants of many different kinds. One
of the most familiar resin-producing
trees is the pitch pine, in which pitch
Is resin.
Resins contain very much more
hydrogen and carbon compared to the
amount of oxygen than ordinary wood,
SO that, other things being equal, the
resinous woods make much hotter
fires than those containing no resins,
the hydrogen and carbon being
sources of the heat. The larger the
amount of heat the hotter the fire.
Many a Mississippi river steamboat
was blown up in the old days when' IN
order to win q race, the barrels OF
resin in the cargo were preached to
feed the fires. Resin adds heat power
not only to the woods which contain 1t,
but also to the Goals.
These are some of the interesting
sidelights on a report which Is rather
dry reading to the layman. How did
resin get into the Goals and why are
some Goals more resinous than others?
These are some Of the questions that
Mr.. White answers for the satisfac-
ton of the student and the efficiency
expert as we'll as for the coal shovel
or in the home.
This is why there is resin in coal.
Being more resistant to decay under
water than the wood cells and other
tissues of the plants and trees from
which the peats of boys and coalform-
ing swamps are produced, the resin
Jumps and particles are generally left
to be buried in the peat deposits, even
when most of the surrounding wood
has rotted away and disappeared.
In this way they are sometimes con-
centrated in quantity so that, together
with WAKES, likewise of heat value,
they form considerable portions of the
vegetable debris in the peat. Peat is
the mother substance which, after
deep burial in the crust Of the earth,
has been converted into coal. The
kind of the peat largely determines the
type OF the coal.
In, his paper Mr.. White emphasizes
the part played by the resin. which in
some Goals is very abundant, in con-
tributing to the heating power OF these
fuels. In some places the glfttering
a1nberlike resin forms large part Of
the coal. Beautiful samples OF this
sort are found in the coal beds OF the
Philippine islands.
Mr.. White has found not only Jumps
of amberlike resin in the bituminous
coal of the Paleozoic. age in Indiana,
Illinois and Iowa, but he also shows
that many of the singular and long-ago
extinct types Of vegetation that grew
In the ancient peat swamps of the
Paleozoic era had trunks containing
great quantities Of resinous sub
stances.