Question

Misuse of coal and petroleum

Answer 1

NATURE of March 20, containing a most interesting communication by Prof. John Perry on the ``Misuse of Coal,'' has reached me lately. Surely Prof. Perry takes an insular view of the matter. Like so many Englishmen, alas ! he knows not the forest ! The greater portion of the world cooks its food and makes itself comfortable on wood fuel, and though all the forests in the world would, according to European ideas, be inadequate to supply by their growth the present expenditure of coal (their fossilised remains), to overlook altogether the sun power which we can fix by growing wood fuel is surely, from even a European point of view, an oversight. Helmholtz compared the number of thermal units received by an acre of land in Germany during a year with the number of thermal units produced by burning the vegetable matter elaborated during a year. His calculation was that only the 11477th part of the sun's heat was thus rendered available.
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