Abstract
THE old Wernerians used to account for volcanic action by the supposed combustion of coal within the earth's crust, but the author of this pamphlet turns the tables upon them by making the volcanoes produce the coal! The way in which this feat is performed is as follows:—first by pointing out that in the sides of the active volcano Gedeh in Java the tuffs are seen to be well stratified, and look, at a distance, like old red sandstone; then the mud deposits ejected by the eruption of Tarawera in New Zealand are also stratified. Next we have somewhat of a leap in the advance of the argument. The Java experience showed, though coal was absent, another way in which it (coal) might originate; namely, being rained down in a shower of bitumen alternately with sandstones, shales, &c. In support of this view we are told that a visit to “the quarries of Carrara and Parnassus” show that “marble is a volcanic rock,” “ejected, accompanied by high-pressure steam, from a fissure and showered down.” We must leave our author with the coal and marble, and not attempt to follow his leading among geological theories, old and new. We fear, judging from books advertised on a fly-leaf at the end of the one before us, that the author has been so much occupied with psychical research, occult powers of Eastern nations and the religions of the world, that he has not found time for even a very little elementary chemistry.
The Volcanic Origin of Coal and Modern Geological Theories: a Plea for Lessening Demands on Geological Time; and for Further Separating the Life Histories of the Aqueous and Volcanic Formations.
By Col. A. T. Fraser (late R.E.). Pp. 21. (London: R. Banks and Sons, 1909.)
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The Volcanic Origin of Coal and Modern Geological Theories: a Plea for Lessening Demands on Geological Time; and for Further Separating the Life Histories of the Aqueous and Volcanic Formations . Nature 81, 246 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/081246a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/081246a0