20 Metaphors for coals

; the harbourage is excellent, and favours a large foreign shipping trade; the staple industries are shipbuilding, engineering, spinning, sugar-refining, &c.; coal and iron are the chief exports, and sugar and timber the largest imports.

But coal is as much an essential condition of this growth and development as carbonic acid is for that of a club-moss.

These facts, for example, do not permit us to suppose that coal is an accumulation of peaty matter, as some have held.

"Coal," was his answer; and, again drawing at his corn-cob, he added, with a sad and understanding smile, "once in a great while."

Coal is so much the greater item that consideration of it will cover that of all the rest.

The coal used was ordinary South Yorkshire, just as it comes from the pits for bunker purposes.

But coal is in a sense the vital essence of our civilization.

The mineral wealth of the colony is very greatgold and silver are found in large quantities, as also copper, tin, iron, &c., but coal is the most abundant and valuable mineral product.

And coal, or rather culm, is the last link in a series of transformations from growing vegetation?

Supplies were low in Nome and prices high; coal, for instance, was a hundred dollars a ton and, as a result, most of the idle citizens spent their evenings-but precious little elsearound the saloon stoves.

But it is a fresh corroboration of the theory that coal has been once vegetable fibre, for it shows how vegetable fibre can, by the laws of nature, become coal.

" "No coal to be shovelledthink of it!" exclaimed Roger, who took care of several furnaces in winter.

He was summoned before the council for objecting because coal, oil, salt, vinegar, starch, iron, glass, were the subjects of monopoly; and he "returned to the House with such an amazed countenance that it daunted all the rest."

No: 'jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame'; and in the soul of Coubitant there dwelt no gentle principles of mercy and forgiveness to quench this fiery flame.

Instead of which, the coal is usually pure vegetable, parted sharply from the sandstone which lies on it.

The Spartan allowing his breast to be devoured by a fox; the Roman holding burning coals between his fingers, were not more masters of themselves than Cousin Benedict, who was undoubtedly descended from those two heroes.

Coal is also carbon, the remains of ancient forests, from which the gases have been slowly driven off by heat and pressure.

The tutor breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcerated with milk watered to the verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too thick for summer.

If coal has all been vegetable soil, then it is likely that some of it has not been quite converted into shapeless coal.

But the actual coal is but an insignificant portion of the total deposit, which, as has been seen, may amount to between two and three miles of vertical thickness.

20 Metaphors for  coals