Abstract
IT is not too much to say that this monograph forms the most important contribution to our knowledge of what coal is, that has yet appeared; the problem has been tackled in the right spirit and by workers with the right kind of experience—namely, by a palæobotanist and a chemist working in conjunction. They themselves define the object of their research as an attempt “to discover what the present actual structure of a bituminous coal most usually is,” and they further define what they understand by coal in the following words: “Ordinary coal is a compact stratified mass of ‘mummified’ plants (which have in part suffered arrested decay to varying degrees of completeness), free from all save a very low percentage of other matter.” They themselves admit that this definition is not satisfactory; in particular it suffers from lack of precision, as much depends upon the sense in which the words “very low percentage” are used; it evidently includes lignite, which is perhaps intentional, but it also must include peat, which it was probably intended to exclude.
Monograph on the Constitution of Coal.
By Dr. M. C. Stopes Dr. R. V. Wheeler. (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.) Pp. 58 + plates iii. (London: H.M.S.O., 1918.) Price 2s. net.
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LOUIS, H. Monograph on the Constitution of Coal . Nature 102, 2 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/102002a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/102002a0