The Age of Coal by J. H. W.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 15, 1874

The Age of Coal.

By J. H. W.

“In one of the old mines in the Upper Hartz—the Dorothea Mine, near Clausthal—some of the wood originally employed as timbering has become so far altered as to assume most of the characteristics of a true lignite, or brown coal. It appears that certain of the levels in the ancient workings of this mine are filled with refuse matter, consisting chiefly of fragments of clay-slate, more or less saturated with mine water, and containing here and there fragments of the old timbering. This wood, when in the mine, is wet, and of a leathery consistence, but exposure to the air it rapidly hardens to a solid substance, having most, if not all, the characteristics of a true lignite. It breaks with a well-marked conchoidal fracture, and the parts which are most altered present the black, lustrous appearance characteristic of the German “pitch coals.” At the same time, chemical examination of the altered wood shows that it stands actually nearer to the true coal than do some of the tertiary lignites. This instance seems, therefore, to prove that pine wood, when placed under highly favorable conditions, may be converted into a genuine lignite within a period which, from what we know of the history of mining in the Hartz, cannot have extended beyond four centuries.—London Athenaeum.”

The above was copied from the N. Y. Witness, and is interesting as a fact, strongly contrasting with the theories of some geologists, whose opinions are all set down as “scientific deductions.” However interesting it may be to others, it will scarcely benefit them, for they are generally in the position of the man who readily declared it was “bad for the facts” that they should come in conflict with a theory so plausible as his! J. H. W.