Excerpt from The Story of Sir Humphrey Davy and the Invention of the Safety-Lamp It seems, therefore, that in a chemical sense coal differs from wood in containing nearly twice as much carbon, somewhat less hydrogen, which is one Of the chief elements of water, and con siderably less oxygen, which is one Of the chief elements of air; in other words, as the wood gradually decays, the hydrogen and oxygen, or gaseous parts, disappear more quickly than the carbon, or solid parts, and hence a great excess Of carbon remains in the fossil wood. Roughly speaking, we may say that you can convert wood into coal by soaking it in water, and exposing it to Immense heat and pressure for a considerable period. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.