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If land predominated, the only monuments we are likely ever to find of Miocene date are those of lacustrine and volcanic origin, such as the Bovey Coal in Devonshire, the Ardtun beds in Mull, or the lignites and associated basalts in Antrim.
Cretaceous coals have been found at Lota in Chili, and at Sandy Point, Straits of Magellan. Turning to Asia, we find that coal has been worked from time to time at Heraclea in Asia Minor. Lignites are met with at Smyrna and Lebanon. The coal-fields of Hindoostan are small but numerous, being found in all parts of the peninsula.
"I had almost forgotten to say that I have obtained unquestionable evidence of the cretaceous age of the coal deposits of Lota and the adjoining localities, north and south, which are generally supposed to be tertiary lignites. They are overlaid by sandstone containing Baculites! I need not adduce other evidence to satisfy geologists of the correctness of my assertion.
In other words, the nature of the combustible formed at every great epoch depended upon general climatic conditions and local chemical action. Anthracite and bituminous coal would have belonged especially to primary times, lignites to secondary and tertiary times, and peat to our own epoch, without the peat ever being able to become lignites or the latter coal.
Briquettes are a new form of fuel made from coal, principally for household use. They are made from the low-grade coals, culm, slack and lignites, blended with coal-tar pitch.
A slow decomposition of the pyrites, which probably act as so many little galvanic piles, renders the waters alumiferous, that circulate across the bituminous lignites and carburetted clays. Analogous chemical actions may take place in primitive and transition slates as well as in tertiary formations.
In Abyssinia lignites are frequently met with in the high lands of the interior. Coal is very extensively developed throughout Australasia. In New South Wales, coal-measures occur in large detached portions between 29° and 35° S. latitude. The Newcastle district, at the mouth of the Hunter river, is the chief seat of the coal trade, and the seams are here found up to 30 feet thick.
Another system being tried abroad, though scarcely past the experimental stage in this country, establishes great electric power-houses at the coal mines to use the culm, low-grade slack, and lignites, the lowest form of coal, in short, all the waste of the mines. Still another plan is the manufacturing of electricity by water-power, as we have seen in a previous chapter.
Although some of the German lignites called Brown Coal belong to the upper parts of this series, the most important of them are of Lower Miocene date, as, for example, those of the Siebengebirge, near Bonn, which are associated with volcanic rocks.
If, then, lignites have not become soft coal, and if the latter has not become anthracite, it is not that time was wanting, but climatic conditions and environment.
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