CHAPTER I.

THE ORIGIN OF COAL AND THE PLANTS OF
WHICH IT IS COMPOSED.


From the homely scuttle of coal at the side of the hearth to the
gorgeously verdant vegetation of a forest of mammoth trees, might have
appeared a somewhat far cry in the eyes of those who lived some fifty
years ago. But there are few now who do not know what was the origin of
the coal which they use so freely, and which in obedience to their demand
has been brought up more than a thousand feet from the bowels of the
earth; and, although familiarity has in a sense bred contempt for that
which a few shillings will always purchase, in all probability a stray
thought does occasionally cross one's mind, giving birth to feelings of a
more or less thankful nature that such a store of heat and light was long
ago laid up in this earth of ours for our use, when as yet man was not
destined to put in an appearance for many, many ages to come. We can
scarcely imagine the industrial condition of our country in the absence
of so fortunate a supply of coal; and the many good things which are
obtained from it, and the uses to which, as we shall see, it can be put,
do indeed demand recognition.

Were our present forests uprooted and overthrown, to be covered by
sedimentary deposits such as those which cover our coal-seams, the amount
of coal which would be thereby formed for use in some future age, would
amount to a thickness of perhaps two or three inches at most, and yet, in
one coal-field alone, that of Westphalia, the 117 most important seams,
if placed one above the other in immediate succession, would amount to no