380 THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN. February 23, 1917. are handled by fixed transporter beams. The bags of coal from the stores are also handled on the transporter beams, to the rail trucks, and then by the cranes to lighters. The German depot, which is owned by a steamship company, has supplied British coal principally to German vessels, and during 1914 about 44,500 tons of Welsh coal were obtained at that depot, the equipment of which includes cranes and a transporter. Santa Cruz (Teneriffe) is the capital of the Canary group of islands, and is situated 256 miles from Madeira, and 53 miles from Las Palmas. The mole there is 2,700 ft. in length, and has an average width of 70 ft. There is a depth alongside, at low water, of from 14 ft. \ ,iri • > if ‘ ' ,iF 'A; . i -'.to -As*.'. * ■ ' -f ’ ■ - . -V , , . . - . .. ....... Fig. 3.—Coaling Depot at Las Palmas. St. Vincent. The next prominent coaling station to be mentioned is St. Vinlent, one of the Cape Verde Islands, which is on the direct course between the Canary Islands and Pernambuco. The port of St. Vincent is Porto Grande, where there are three British-owned coaling depots, and a conces- sion has been granted for a fourth. In connection with one of these depots (illustrated in fig. 5), there is a breakwater 500 ft. in length (seen in the foreground), and a jetty 270 ft. long. There are two steam cranes at the head of the jetty, and two at the end of the break- water: and adjoining the quay will be observed the coal storage ground, which has an area of about 75,350 sq ft., number was 1,660—1,056 being British and 228 German. The bunker deliveries of Welsh coal in 1913 were about 222,500 tons, the average price being 38s.; in 1912 the supplies amounted to 274,200 tons, and the average price was 31s. It should also be stated that bunker deliveries are given from lighters, varying from about 50 to 200 tons capacity. THE CONSTITUTION OF COAL. At a well-attended meeting of th© members of the Newcastle section of the Society of Chemical Industry, held at Newcastle on February 14, Mr. Henry Peile (of the Priestman Collieries Limited) presiding, sum- maries of papers (previously read to the London section) on “ The Constitution of Coal as Regards its Definition and Classification, including Chemical and Microscopical Investigation,” by Dr. Marie C. Stopes and Dr. R. V. Wheeler, were read and discussed. Dr. Stopes' Paper. Dr. Stopes, of University College, London, stated that, in spite of the voluminous literature on the subject of coal, she had come across no satisfactory general definition of coal. She suggested, as a simple definition, although she recognised that it would be very easy to criticise it, the following :—“ Ordinary coal is a compact, stratified mass of ‘ mummified ’ plants (which have, in part, suffered arrested decay to varying degrees of completeness) free from all save a very low percentage of other matter.’’ Veins, partings, etc., which were found in nearly all coals, were local impurities, and not part of the coal itself. Unless the accre- tion of the plant substance was so pure and free from other matter (mineral detritus, etc.) as to be substantially a deposit of plants alone, it was not a coal. Cannel formed a partial exception to that rule. Some oil shales differed from some coals only in having mineral debris in a sub- stantial proportion mingled with their organic material. Thus, when the potential coal debris was mingled with detrital matter, it ceased to be possible for it to become a coal, and it became either an oil shale, or a carbonaceous shale, or a mineral shale, sandstone, or clay, with isolated fossils in it, varying in its character according to the pro- to 27 ft., the rise of th© tide being about 5 ft. to 8ft., whilst the anchorage depth in the harbour is about 60 ft. The principal coaling depot is under British ownership. At Teneriffe, lighters of from 100 to 350 tons capa-. city are used, and are towed to on© or other of two jetties, the coal being landed at the rate of 900 to 1,000 tons per. day. Fig. 4 shows one of the jetties, along which rail tracks extend to the stores, platform trucks being hauled by mules. The storage accommodation at this depot includes 6,000 tons in covered stores, a similar quantity in open stacks, and 5,000 tons afloat in covered lighters. Bunker supplies are usually effected from lighters at each side of the vessel, and the coal is hoisted in bags, a number at a time, by means of a sling. The number of vessels which entered the port of Teneriffe during 1914 amounted to 1,370, with an aggre- gate tonnage of about 4,000,000, of which number 772 were British vessels, and 260 were under the German flag.. The coal deliveries from the British Isles to Teneriffe during 1914 amounted to about 228,000 tons, about 179,000 tons being Welsh and the balance Durham. At Teneriffe there is also a German-owned depot, which supplied to German vessels about 25,800-tons of Welsh coal during the same year (1914). The figures for 1914 have been taken, because the conditions since then have, of course, been quite Aii if1 > A * . '7 S' SWS sr' s ‘ .......... -. ' - >' at'1 A A. »A S - Fig. 4.—Landing Coal at Teneriffe. Fig. 5.—Coaling Depot at St. Vincent (Cape Verde Islands). abnormal. Even in that year the bunker, deliveries at Las Palmas and Teneriffe totalled about '494,000 tons during the first six months, which figure was reduced to about 212,500 tons delivered during the latter half of the year. In comparing th© bunker deliveries with those of previous years from these important coaling stations at the Canary Islands, it may be mentioned that the total supplies have exceeded a million tons per annum since the y©ar 1909, and it should be added that, during 1912, the figure was 1,347,000 tons. As regards prices, in November 1914 bunker supplies of Welsh coal were quoted at 33s., and Durham 29s. 6d., but these figures rapidly increased, ths quotations in February 1915 being respectively 50s. and 46s. 6d. During the same period, the freight on coal varied from 7s. to 28s., and reached 47s. 6d. in 1916. and is provided with three steam cranes. Coal is trans- ferred to and from th© storage ground in skips by trolleys, rail tracks extending from the jetty and break- water. The crane tracks ar© parallel on the storage ground, and ar© raised above ground level by platforms. The cranes ar© transferred from one brack to another, as required, by the cross-over track at th© back of the ground; and the tracks for the skip trolleys are parallel with the crane tracks in between them, but at ground level. By this arrangement, th© skips can be easily and quickly removed from, or loaded on to, the trolleys. To give some idea of the prominence of St. Vincent as a port of call and coaling station, and taking figures for the pre-wars years of 1913 and 1912, it may be men- tioned that 1,397 vessels called in 1913 (including 859 British,. and 205 German); whilst in 1912 the total portions of vegetable and mineral matter, and the condi- tions of contemporaneous decay and deposition. While many fantastic suggestions had been made con- cerning the origin of coal, and while these had sporadically appeared even as recently as the 20th century, the simple and most fundamental fact that coal was made of plants was known long before modern science began to research on the subject. As early at 1592, Klein remarked on the origin of brown coal from wood, and, by the early 18th century, coal was generally supposed to be the result of the forests which had been swept away by the Deluge. An exhaustive and, in some respects, amazingly “ modern ” account of coal was to be found in Williams (1789), who was convinced of the formation of coal from wood as an aqueous deposit. While the views based on the Deluge were combated, the theory of the vegetable origin of coal took firm root, and, towards the end of the 18th century, there was a number of writers who accepted it almost as axio- matic, and who had already realised the connection between coial and peat. (See, for instance, von Beroldingen, 1778; de Luc, 1779; Hutton, 1795.) Voigt (1802 and 1810) attacked and ridiculed von Beroldingen’s excellent work, and distinctly hindered the march of truth. He started the theory that anthracite and stone were necessarily the oldest, arid brown coal the product of younger formations. The effect of many of his incorrect conclusions was to be seen up to the present day. Perhaps it was enough to say of most of the work and opinions published in the first quarter of the 19th century that they were surprisingly like most of those of the early 20th century. From the end of the 18th century, the real argument bad not been whether coal was made of plants or not—about which all serious opinion was agreed—but whether that vegetable material grew where it was found or travelled from a distance. To-day, as it was half a cen- tury ago, the opposing theories of “ drift ” and “ in situ ” origin of coal were, indeed, only reconciled in the more advanced minds, and the conflict still raged between those Who had local experience pointing to one tissue or the other. Coal being composed only of vegetable material, what could they anticipate regarding its ultimate structure? Obvious deductions were :— (a) That it would be an organic complex; (b) That the organic molecules would be various; (c) That they should, or, at any rate, might, bear some relation to the molecules of the organic substances of the plants from which they originated ; hence that they would