WHEN COAL WAS FORMED.

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 21 August 1912, Page 7

WHEN COAL WAS FORMED.

What is • said to be the strangest period through which this earth has passed is the one that was responsible for the formation of coal. The planet is described as being at that time flat and smooth as to surface and peculiar as to vegetation. The continents were just beginning to rise above the ocean, and the land had not yet become dry. Mountain ranges had not arisen from the swamps and the atmosphere was thick with fog. In this state of affairs there sprouted and flourished the plants which were later to furnish the world with it's coal supply.

These plants grew as big as our largest trees, taking deep root in the morass and flourishing like the lush grasses in moist meadow land, developed into the strange shapes now found in tropic vegetation. The forests looked, scientists state, like dense growths of weeds, rushes and enormous ferns.. Some of them grew in the shape of cacti, having spines all over them. This kind of vegetation was very rich in carbon, which it derived from the warm, moist atmosphere. . Then the millions of years rolled by, the forests of giant weeds were buried /by deposits of earthy material and the chemical change took place which slowly changed them into coal. This process stopped with the carboniferous age, so that when the present supply of coal is dug out of the ground there will be no more. -*"