Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 116, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1919 — Jet. [ARTICLE]

Jet.

If ydu have made the trip to the bottom pf a coal mine and.have seen how the black lumps are made ready for use. perhaps you know that jet. the shiny black substance that you see so often; made into pretty ornaments, beads, buttons. et<v, is closely akin to coal. The history, of the formation of jet is much like that of coal. Thousands of years ago, masses of wood were carried down into the sea by the rivers, and, there waterlogged. It sank and became embedded in the mud. Pressure and heat and the salt water wrought the change in the wood. Even now traces of the wood structure can be detected in the jet itself. In years gone by jet used tb be found in lumps off the coast of Yorkshire, the jet incased in shale known as jet-rock, washed up by the sea: but now that supply is not sufficient and jet has to be regularly mined. In Whitby. Yorkshire, the best jet is produced, bur there are also important mines in France and Spain, and America, too. has quantities of the shale, though it is not systematically mined.