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Lignite is the name which has been applied to a form of impure coal, which sometimes goes under the name of "brown coal." It is not a true coal, and is a very long way from that final stage to which it must attain ere it takes rank with the most valuable of earth's products.
There is also much imperfect rubbly pitchstone, with the interstices charged with powdery carbonate of lime apparently of contemporaneous origin. These lavas are conformably associated with strata of breccia and of brown tuff containing lignite. The whole mass has been broken up and tilted at an angle of 45 degrees, by a series of great volcanic dikes, one of which was thirty yards in breadth.
Traced in one direction, or eastward towards Herne Bay, the Woolwich beds assume more and more of a marine character; while in an opposite, or south-western direction, they become, as near Chelsea and other places, more fresh-water, and contain Unio, Paludina, and layers of lignite, so that the land drained by the ancient river seems clearly to have been to the south-west of the present site of the metropolis.
Coal-bearing strata are found at Bowen River, in Queensland, covering an area of 24,000 square miles, whilst important mines of Cretaceous age are worked at Ipswich, near Brisbane. In New Zealand quantities of lignite, described as a hydrous coal, are found and utilised; also an anhydrous coal which may prove to be either of Cretaceous or Jurassic age.
A still younger coal, which is soft and has a brownish color, is called lignite, and is found mostly in the South and West. Still another sort of fuel, known as peat, is found in swamps where considerable vegetation is now accumulating, or has accumulated in recent times. Peat is a mass of plant stems, roots, and moss, partly decayed and pressed together.
The numerous islands of this group, with the exception of Lemus, Ypun, consist of metamorphic schists; these two islands are formed of softish grey and brown, fusible, often laminated sandstones, containing a few pebbles, fragments of black lignite, and numerous mammillated concretions of hard calcareous sandstone. Voluta, fragments of.
It has also been considered as the result of the more or less complete decomposition of plants under the influence of heat and dampness, which has led them to pass successively through the following principal stages: peat, lignite, bituminous coal, anthracite.
"Already," wrote President Roosevelt in a message to Congress urging the repeal of the Stone and Timber Act, the Desert Land Law, the Coal Land Act and similar enactments, "probably one-half of the total area of high-grade coals in the West has passed under private control. Including both lignite and the coal areas, these private holdings aggregate not less than 30,000,000 acres of coal fields."
The Bonnifield near Fairbanks, far in the interior, is the largest field yet discovered, and in one hundred and twenty-two square miles of it that have been surveyed, there are about ten billions of tons. Cross sections show veins two hundred and thirty-one feet thick. This coal is lignite." "How about the Matanuska fields?" asked Mr. Bromley.
So I was fain to be content, though my fowls looked draggled and wretched, and my pet patch of mignonette became a miniature desert, its fragrance being all blown and rain-beaten away. Good fires of lignite and wood made the house cheery, and we went to bed, hoping for fine weather next day.
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