I used to make the coal beds six to eight inches deep.

我过去常常把煤层挖到 6 到 8 英寸深。

It is found in beds, or layers, or seams, deep down in the earth.

是从深深地下“矿床”或者叫“煤层”找到。

Some people believe that if this continues, oilfields and coal mines will become empty in the future.

一些人相信如果这种情况继续下去，煤层在将来将会枯竭。

Cheap fossil energy, concentrated by geologic time and pressure in seams of coal or pools of oil, changed all that.

经过地质时间压力凝缩，富集于煤层廉价化石能源改变了这一切。

From the bottom of the shaft the miners cut low passages through the seams, and dig out the coal.

矿工们从矿井底部, 在煤层里开凿出巷道，把煤挖出来。

The coal sits in big fat seams close to the surface.

煤炭位于靠近地表大肥煤层。

In the coal itself it is very hard to tell one plant from another, for they have all been crushed together.

可是，在煤层里面，就很难把一棵棵植物分开，因为植物全都压碎了，混在一起了。

In some coal mines seams of coal are worked which are three thousand feet below the surface of the ground.

在一些煤矿里，矿工开采煤层，足有地表之下3000英尺深。

Coal mining, which liberates the stuff from coal seams, is the second-biggest source of Chinese methane after agriculture.

煤炭开采从煤层释放出物质，是国仅次于农业第二大甲烷来源。

Then, to reach the buried coal seams, explosives are used to remove up to 800 feet of mountain elevation.

然后， 为了到达埋藏煤层，使用炸药移除高达 800 英尺山体高度。

When I removed my hand it was black. I looked nearer, and found we were in a coal formation.

当我把手拿开时，它是黑色。我凑近一看，发现我们身处煤层之。

The seams of coal are often from three to eight feet thick, and there are layers of sandstone or of clay between them.

煤层厚度一般是3英尺到8英尺，煤层之间是砂岩或者粘土。

To get coal, men called miners, or colliers, dig deep holes straight down into the earth, until they reach the seams of coal.

有一些叫做“矿工”人，在地上挖出深洞，深洞笔直地向下延伸，一直挖到煤层。

The beds of coal were separated by strata of sandstone or compact clays, and appeared crushed under the weight of overlying strata.

煤层被砂岩或致密粘土地层隔开，并在上覆地层重量作用下被压碎。

A good example of this phenomenon is recorded in the coal-bearing layers of the 48-million-year old fossil site in Germany known as Geiseltal .

这种现象一个很好例子是在德国 4800 万年前化石遗址 Geiseltal 含煤层记录。

You will then walk along the low passages cut in the coal seam, and you will see men with pick-axes breaking down and cutting out great blocks of the coal.

然后你就可以沿着煤层开凿巷道走一走，会看见人们拿着镐头，把大块煤砍下来，挖出来。