THE ROMANCE OF COAL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9071, 23 April 1908, Page 4

THE ROMANCE OF COAL.

| Professor Tonge,. of Victoria U»i~ versitv, has written a book telling. I us all about coal. It is quite a- ro* inantic story. It. appears fromi £. work of Thaeophrastus,. 238 B.C. r that coal was lined by metalworkersat that time. The- Chinese learnt the valu'! of it in antiquity.. Ihe Romans engaged in coal mining during their occupation o£ Britain, and there are evidences of an earlier industry. Tools of Roman type have been found in old. colliery workings.. At the time of Magna. Charta.coal was an article of,commerce. Towards the end of the thirteenth; century it I came into general use; among, manufacturers in London, though) objection was made to the ")i oisome smell and thick air." Queen Elizabeth prohibited its use during the sitting of Parliament, as it was feared that the health of the knights of the shires might suffer during their abode in the metropolis. Goal, mining spread gradually from Newcastle to Durham and Yorkshire, and then to Lancashire,, the Midlands, and South Wales. In • the seventeenth century vva hear of coal exports. The-invention, of. the steam engine in, .1784 gave a. great impetus to. the industry. Then, too, iron ore w.as found* ih olose proximity to the coal seams—and these were the chief factions in giving England the lead when the age of industrialism began.. In. the carboniferous period, when the coal were laid, down,, the earth has been welL likened to a great summer-house.. Tropical heat extended oyer almost all its, surface, and there was probably a . much greater percentage of carbon dioxide' in the atmosphere. As there ;was also abundance of moisture, the conditions foiv plant-growth were ideal, ]Jand this explains the enorj: mous vegetation of the period. The thickness of tha. seam is an index to the time for'which vegetative growth was uninterrupted, Alternate elevation and subsidence deposit sand and shale, and form a surface freshly suited for plant-growth, so that diathere may be many saerns one below the other; but these are subject to the effects of dislocation and distortion of the earth's c*ust. The most important factor in the change through which coal has passed from the vegetable to the mineral character is heat, though time„ and pressure also play their part, as to the way in which a searri was originally laid down, thero are two possibilities. The first is that the vegetation died where it lived; that the seam, in fact, represents the forest "in situ." It often I does so. But there are r.thor cases in which lakes or estuaries have been gradually filled up with driftwood. Such coals often contain abundance of fish remains. The shales and sandstones associated 1 with coal acams yield an abundance of fossils, both plant and animal. The remains of coal plants found in J bhnles were, probably, carried by '

water, and the animal remains are those of creatures which, for the most part, lived in brackish and muddy lagoons. Fossils are a very important guide to the practical miner, especially when he has to dig to locate a seam which has been lost.