George Ingram had made a thorough study of coal, or fossil fuel, its
formation and value. The coal of the carboniferous age is derived almost
entirely from the family of plants called _Lycopods_, or club mosses, and
the ferns, which back in high antiquity attained gigantic size. The
microscope has clearly developed this vegetable origin of coal. The great
Appalachian and other coal fields are without doubt, the long continued
and vigorous forest growths, and subsequent fossilization of the same in
the marginal swamps of ancient gulfs or seas.
The agency of transfer for solar energy is the vegetable kingdom. The
vegetable cell has the surprising property through the sun's agency of
being able to live and multiply itself on air alone. The carbon of
carbonic acid, a constituent of the atmosphere, is so liberated and
appropriated, as to become fixed in the forming tissues of plants. Thus
the plant is a storer of light and heat, a reservoir of force. It
mediates between the sun's energy and the animal life of the world. Thus
coal seams are the accumulations of the sun's energy for thousands of
centuries, requiring the patient growth and slow decay of hundreds of
immense forests.
Pages:
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315