The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-07-31
CONNECTICUT COAL
 MAY BE UTILIZED
Small Veins Prospected by Yale Paleantologists;
 Peat Also Native.

Although the Hartford City Gas Light Co.,. has already ordered coal from England to eke out possible coal famine here. on account of the miners strike, some Connecticut manufacturers and householders may be able to solve the fuel problem with coal from this state.
 There are one or two small veins of coal in Connecticut which have been prospected by paleontologists from Yale who have been searching for mammalian fossils, but these veins being only few feet in thick ness have never been worked com mercially. Peat, which is found at numerous places in the state. also has a fuel values and during the Civil War, when prices were prohibitive, peat was an important Connecticut shipped to New York and Boston. There are peatbogs in Rockville, FL hngton, Coventry, Meriden, Columbia and Norwich and during the war idea of the possible use of peat as fuel then. The statistics on the peat supply in Connecticut are include ed in the data compiled by the war fuel administration which has been. re- quested from Washington for use to the emergency fule commission to supervise the fuel consumption in the state during the strike of the miners.
 Rhode Island Mining Coal
 Rhode Island, in fact, is now min ing coal near Providence and is turn ing out almost 1000 tons of coal a day from a mine at Cranston. The coal there is not as free burning as 1t contains about 25 per cent ot water, but when used in the pea o1 chestnut sizes it gives a fire about as hot as the Pennsylvania coal and b,1rpS I00per
 The coal mine at Cranston is just below valuable graphite deposit and has been worked at intervals since .the British troops occupied the state during the Revolution, although it is only recently that the burning proper ties of the coal there have been dis covered. The mine is now in charge of a mine boss from Scranton and in- cIuded in its equipment is a S500,00C crusher.
 The mine has had a long and var jed history and extensive mining op- erations were carried on about 1S40 the coal being sold in Providence and the coal dust being sold to brick mak- CTS of the neighborhood, and to oth- CTS as far away as the Hudson Val lev It was this brick dust angle oi the business which interested Luciar B. Hanks of Hartford, who bought the lease on the mine in 1S41. He ran the mine in very expensive manner however, and became dis couraged, allowing the mine to fil with water and abandoning opera tioDS.
 Connecticut had a few out1iers ot the coal formations Of the AMeghan- ies and there are other rock forma- i lions in the state which are coal bearing, for not all of the coal de posits are found in the rocks of the Carboniferous age! with it's great l ferns and massive swamps. usually | considered as the coal forming age | found in rock formation which are older or younger than the Carboni- | ferrous. Roughly there are SIX stage: l in coal formation; First there is the swamp in which the vegetable matter collects and decays, then the peat | bog, not as wet as the swamp. The | peat bog, if subject to heat and great | pressure by changes in the eartn's surface becomes bituminous- coal and | still more heat pressure will convert | the bituminous coal into anthracite | IT is estimated that it takes a peat bog about 100 feet thick 10 make a foo vein of hard coal. The final stage il | cdaI is graphite. an amorphous subs | tance, which is practically pure car 1 bon There are important coal mine. | iI Nova Scotia. 3Geologfcary thes, .to rekions are similar to Connec. cut