Jean Websters, age 3, of Ottawa, Canada for her question:

What is natural gas?

Nowadays many kitchen ranges are fueled with natural gas.  This gas is made deep in the rocky crust of the earth, Most of it occurs near pools of underground petroleum and rocks steeped in petroleum, Same of it escapes through cracks in the ground and is lost in the air.  Some is let out of its prison by drilling.

Natural gas is mostly methane gas, This gas is also known as marsh gas and the dangerous mine gas. There are almost always other gases mixed with the methane, Often there are traces of butane,  propanes, nitrogen and helium gases.

Some of these combinations of gases make better fuels than others, The best mixtures are led off and piped for hundreds of miles. Installing the pipes is a very expensive job, But: when the expense is over! the natural gas fuel is very inexpensive as compared with coal! Which has to be mined, A hundred cubic feet of good natural gas has fuel power equal to about 13 pounds of coal.