Coal

Coal is a dark sedimentary rock that burns, black or brownish-black, made mostly of carbon with smaller and varying amounts of hydrogen, sulphur, oxygen and nitrogen. It begins as plant matter that rots into peat; buried deep for millions of years, the peat is turned to coal by heat and pressure. Its kinds are ranked by how far that change has gone, from lignite, also called brown coal, through sub-bituminous and bituminous coal to the hard, glossy black anthracite. People have burned it for thousands of years, and in London in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries it took the place of wood on the household hearth. In Scotland a piece handed over on New Year's Day during first-footing is counted lucky and stands for warmth in the months ahead. Cunningham gives coal a receptive energy, the planet Saturn and the element earth, and names money as its single power. He reports that many people regard it as a strong draw for money, so it is kept in a pocket or put with cash, and that speculators on the London stock exchange have carried a lump for luck.