The Mentor: The Story of Coal, vol. 6, Num. 6, Serial No. 154, May 1, 1918

The Mentor: The Story of Coal, vol. 6, Num. 6, Serial No. 154, May 1, 1918

While the vegetable origin of coal is beyond question, two rival views are current among geologists to account for the deposit of ancient plant material in the form of coal-beds, such as we now find in the earth. One school of geologists holds that the coal plants grew in great lagoons and swamps, like the mangrove swamps of today, and that the modern coal-beds mark the locations of these swamps. From time to time these areas subsided and were flooded with water to such a depth that the plants were killed. Eventually the decayed vegetation of the former swamps was covered with a layer of mud or sand. Later a slow upheaval of the ground brought these regions again to the surface; a new swamp formed, only to be submerged again at a later period; and the same process was repeated several times in the course of hundreds of thousands of years. The bulk of evidence seems to favor this view, but there is another. Perhaps the coal-beds are not the sites of former swamps, but of estuaries and ocean shores where the plant material settled down, in still water, after a long drift down the ancient rivers from its place of origin. It is not impossible that both explanations are correct; some coal-beds having been formed in one way, and some in the other. With the progress of time the deposits of sand were compacted into sandstone, and the mud and clay into shale; while the layers of vegetation were solidified by pressure, some of their constituents were vaporized and expelled by heat, and the final product was coal. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 51106
Author: Talman, Charles Fitzhugh
Release Date: Feb 2, 2016
Format: eBook
Language: English