THE ORIGIN AND RELATIONS OF THE CARBON MINERALS.

[Footnote: Read before the New York Academy of Sciences, February 6,
1882.]

By J.S. NEWBERRY.


What are called the carbon minerals--peat, lignite, coal, graphite,
asphalt, petroleum, etc.--are, properly speaking, not minerals at
all, as they are organic substances, and have no definite chemical
composition or crystalline forms. They are, in fact, chiefly the
products or phases of a progressive and inevitable change in
plant-tissue, which, like all organic matter, is an unstable compound
and destined to decomposition.

In virtue of a mysterious and inscrutable force which resides in the
microscopic embryo of the seed, a tree begins its growth. For a brief
interval, this growth is maintained by the prepared food stored in the
cotyledons, and this suffices to produce and to bring into functional
activity--some root-fibrils below and leaves above, with which
the independent and self-sustained life of the individual begins.
Henceforward, perhaps for a thousand years, this life goes on, active in
summer and dormant in winter, absorbing the sunlight as a motive power
which it controls and guides. Its instruments are the discriminating
cells at the extremities of the root-fibrils, which search for, select,