ANTHRACITE, a black, light, mineral substance, resembling coal; so named from dsepat, charcoal. It is also called Blind-Coal, became it burns without flame ; and Glance-Coal, from the German word glans (lustre), because It has often a shining surface like graphite or blacklead, as it is improperly called, the substance of which pencils are made, and to which it is very closely allied in composition. In some systems of mineralogy it is divided into mmsive, slaty, and columnar anthracite ; but these are mere accidental varieties of structure, and are all of the same chemical composition, when the pure anthracite is separated from the matrix, or from the foreign matter with which it is mechanically mixed. Its specific gravity is about 1400, water being 1000; it is slowly combustible, but without flame, and contains from 70 to 90 per cent. of carbon. Naphtha may be considered as one extremity of the mineral carbonaceous sub stances, and anthracite as the other ; and from the highly-inflammable fluid naphtha we have numerous varieties of mineral tar, or petroleum, bitumen, asphaltum, cannel-coal, caking-coal, slaty-coal, &e., all dimi
nishing in inflammability, until at last we come to the blind-coal, or anthracite. If asphaltum, or indurated mineral pitch, be subjected to distillation, at a certain stage of the process, when it has lost a part of the bitumen which it contains, it resembles caking Newcastle coal ; continuing the distillation, it passes into a substance which is identical with anthracite, both in appearance and composition. The following is an analysis of Welsh anthracite It is undoubtedly of vegetable origin in common with all coal. [COAL; COAL PLANTS.]