COAL: ITS STRUCTURE AND FORMATION. 



PART I. 



AMONG the humiliating proofs of our limited powers 

 of inquiry, there are few which are more striking 

 than that which is manifested by the inefficiency of our in- 

 vestigations relative to coal." 1 With these words, eighty- 

 three years ago, Parkinson began one of his letters " on the 

 opinions respecting the formation of coal ". Since his day 

 our knowledge of the Coal-Measures has gradually increased, 

 but we cannot yet afford to regard his words as entirely in- 

 applicable to our present position. In another letter, the 

 same writer thus sums up his own views as to the manner 

 of coal formation : " The opinion, which the strictest 

 examination of every circumstance seems best to warrant 

 the adoption of, appears to be, that coal is a product of the 

 vegetable matter which has been buried at several distant 

 periods, but chiefly in consequence of a universal deluge ; 

 and which, after having been reduced to a fluid state by the 

 bituminous fermentation, has suffered a certain modification 

 of that inflammability which bitumens in general possess, 

 by the deposition of its carbon, and by an intimate and 

 peculiar intermixture with various earthy and metallic 

 salts ".'- 



It would take us far beyond the limits of a single article 

 to make any serious attempt to follow the gradual growth 

 of our knowledge of coal, or the development of the theories 

 which have, from time to time, been propounded as to its 

 mode of formation. Some of the earlier theories of coal 

 formation, such as we find in the works of Sternberg 3 and 

 Link, 4 regard the seams of coal as the altered accumulation 

 of masses of vegetable matter deposited as water-borne 

 sediment. The latter writer, whose pages contain many 



1 Parkinson, vol. i., p. 233. 2 Ibid., p. 248. 



3 Sternberg, Fasc. i. and ii. 4 Link, p. 43. 



