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The drawing-rooms are always kept very hot by huge fires of anthracite coal, and the doors are left open to neutralise the effect. The temperance at table filled me with surprise. I very seldom saw any beverage but pure iced-water. There are conveniences of all descriptions for the use of the guests.
Uniting of many Coal-seams into one thick Bed. Purity of the Coal explained. Conversion of Coal into Anthracite. Origin of Clay-ironstone. Marine and brackish-water Strata in Coal. Fossil Insects. Batrachian Reptiles. Labyrinthodont Foot-prints in Coal-measures. Nova Scotia Coal-measures with successive Growths of erect fossil Trees. Similarity of American and European Coal.
The same type of slow-sailing vessels carried all the commerce. Wind and water were the only powers employed in running the few factories. Only a little iron was used in this country, and in fact almost its only use anywhere at that time was for tools. There was little machinery, and that of the simplest description. Anthracite coal was known in this country only as a hard black rock.
Three tons are sufficient in the Middle States, and four tons in the Northern, to keep one fire through the winter. That which is bright, hard, and clean is best; and that which is soft, porous, and covered with damp dust is poor. It will be well to provide two barrels of charcoal for kindling to every ton of anthracite coal.
There was anthracite coal, which was first mined in Pennsylvania in 1814 on a very inconsiderable scale; and now the output was more than five million tons a year. It was supplanting wood in the making of steam. The Chippewas had ceded their copper lands on the south shore of Lake Superior, and the mining and manufacture of copper had become an extensive industry.
"Finally, the fuel consumption is reduced, which in the case of the Eastern plants, with their relatively costly coke, is a very important consideration. It is regarded as possible that Eastern furnaces will be able to use a smaller proportion of the costlier coke and correspondingly increase in anthracite coal, which is a cheaper fuel in that section.
In most big cities and many farming districts east of the Mississippi the shortage of anthracite threatened calamity. In the populous industrial States, from Ohio eastward, it was not merely calamity, but the direct disaster, that was threatened.
Its large windows faced south and west, and all of the Winter sunshine fell upon them, glowing through crimson curtains, and helping the piled-up anthracite in the grate to bathe the room in a ruddiness of crimson and golden bronze. On this particular December day, the air was crisp and cold, and full of floating particles of hoar frost, while the winter sun shone bright and clear.
Anthracite coal is almost universally used, so there is an absence of that murky, yellow canopy which disfigures English towns. The atmosphere is remarkably dry, so that even white marble edifices, of which there are several in the town, suffer but little from the effects of climate.
A lady once told me that she could never raise plants in her parlors on account of the gas and anthracite coal. I answered, "Are you not afraid to live and bring up your children in an atmosphere which blights your plants?"
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