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Updated: May 10, 2025
By a continuation of the same processes the mass becomes still more dense and solid. As we pass from the top to the bottom of such an accumulation of peat, we find it becoming denser and denser, and at the bottom it is commonly of a hard consistence, brownish in colour, and with only slight traces of the original woody structure. Such material is called lignite.
This was at first called Lignite Canyon, but was afterwards renamed on account of the grey colour of the walls; an unusual feature. The work here was similar to that in Desolation, and we were not sorry when we came to the foot of it, there going into camp to await the return of Powell. One of our flags was planted at the end of an island below the canyon mouth, so that he might see it.
The thickness of the marls is ten feet, and vegetable matter predominates so much in some layers as to form an imperfect lignite. Some of the upper beds at Monod abound in leaves of Proteaceae, Cyperaceae, and ferns, while in some of the lower ones Sequoia, Cinnamomum, and Sparganium are common.
In the upper part they pass into white, soft sediments and brecciolas, very like those described at Chiloe; as indeed is the whole formation. The main bed here is three feet thick; and only the coal of this one bed has a glossy fracture. Another irregular, curvilinear bed of brown, compact lignite, is remarkable for being included in a mass of coarse gravel.
It is supposed to have been a tree-climbing frugivorous ape, equalling man in stature. As the trunks of oaks are common in the lignite beds in which it lay, it has received the generic name of Dryopithecus. The faluns of the Loire first served, as already stated, as the type of the Miocene formations in Europe.
When vegetable matter is excluded from air and under great pressure, it decomposes slowly, parting with carbonic acid gas; and is first changed into lignite or brown coal, and then into bituminous coal, or the soft coal that burns with smoke and flame. I have been in a coal-mine where the carbonic acid gas, pouring from a crevice in the coal, put out a lighted candle.
These beds include subordinate layers of greenish impure clay, soft micaceous and calcareous sandstones, and reddish friable earthy matter with white specks like decomposed crystals of feldspar; they include, also, hard concretions, fragments of shells, lignite, and silicified wood.
By this means they become gradually converted into lignite or wood-coal, which contains a larger proportion of hydrogen than wood does. A continuance of decomposition changes this lignite into common or bituminous coal, chiefly by the discharge of carbureted hydrogen, or the gas by which we illuminate our streets and houses.
Ashes. Density. Peat 5.63 57.03 29.67 2.09 5.58 Lignite 5.59 70.49 17.2 1.73 49.1 4.99 1.2 Bitumin. coal 5.14 87.45 4 1.63 68 1.78 1.29 Anthracite 3.3 92.5 2.53 89.5 1.58 1.3
There are mines of silver, copper, lignite and salt, and many hot springs, including some of great repute medicinally. Average annual exports 1896-1898, £920,762; imports, £411,836. His father dying in the following year, commended him to the care and favour of his brother and successor, Henry III., who faithfully fulfilled the charge.
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