HISTORY OF PITCOAL. iGS 



not tl+at It reaped from those plants sufficient materials to 

 till those inexhaustible lakes of bitumen, that intersperse 

 our ^lobe from one pole to the other, and which the genera- 

 tions vet to be born will perhaps never exhaust. Thev ^'^.'■^.^^'^*/"^^ 



' ^ . ., ongiuutcd on 



would |>rove too, if this could be doubted, that it did not jij^ surface of 

 fabricate this composition, as it does that of minerals, mihe Earth, 

 the interior of the earth, but on its surface only ; that is, 

 in the region it has chosen for the existence of organized 

 beings. 



It is true, that trunks of trees are found in veins of coal : Trunks of trees 

 consequently trees existed at that period. But are these jj^^^, really 

 trunks themselves coal ? Have they been analysed with a coal? 

 view to compare their products, and examine whether simi- 

 lar changes have taken place in these trees, and in those 

 that are supposed to have been converted into coal ? The Analysis of 



importance of analysiui^ fossil wood in this respect appears dossil woodim- 

 , • r<. . 1 11 1* -1^. 1 portaat to the 



obvious. It It were once demonstrated, that a tossil trunk qucbtion. 



of a tree contains charcoal in the same proportion as the bi- 

 tumens surrounding it; and that this charcoal, beside its 

 degree of concentration, is combined with a fresh dose of 

 uitix)gen, so as to have lost that prompt and easy combusti- 

 bility, which characterizes the charcoal of our woods ; we 

 might flatter ourselves, that we had an argum.ent of great 

 weight in favour of the opinion here attempted to be shaken : 

 and we should be less surprised to find in this astonishing 

 result of their metamorphosis, pitcoal, seventy or eighty Quantity of 

 per cent of cliarcoal ; that is to say a proportion, which, if charcoal m pit- 

 • 1 1 1 PI • • 1 p ^^'^' incoasis- 



it had been that of the vegetables existing before those pe- teni with such 



riods, would appear difficult to reconcfte with that elastic ^'^?^'^^^'^^ ^'^ 



. . . . . ours. 



and robust organization, which our forest trees require, to 



raise tirm and secure trunk, and resists the storms of an 

 atmosphere agitated like ours. This weak part of the grand 

 problem may sooij be elucidated, if our cabinets do not de- 

 lay the eagerness of chemistry to decipher the medals of this 

 kind they contain : and if natural history, assisted by thp 

 light of analysis, do not discover something more satisfac- 

 tory, than any thing that has yet been advanced respecting 

 the origin of pitcoal, we ought no longer to waste our time 

 in reasoning on this prodigious event in geology, but banish 

 ail tjje hsarned hypotheses that have been started o a the sub- 

 ject, 



