46 Geological Discoveries at Billesdofi Coplow, 



waters were rising; and all the more loamy earths by the 

 gradual retreat and subsiding of the waters. These long- 

 continued actions and deposits of the water are a sure guide 

 in accounting for all the conformations and heterogeneous 

 masses found in most parts of the alluvial earth." 



Thus, with the semblance of truth on our side, and reason 

 for our guide, we may unhesitatingly infer that the tropical 

 fruits, plants, and other fossils, which we find so indiscrimi- 

 nately scattered in the submedial, medial, and superior strata of 

 geologists (and many others, which may also arise from their 

 fossil tombs, at some distant day, to prove the fallibility of 

 modern theories), were upborne to their respective destinations 

 by the levelling floods of the Noachian deluge ; and, conse- 

 quently, are, like the strata in which they are embedded, of 

 contemporaneous origin ; and were, in all probability, deposited 

 at a period when no portion of England had raised its head 

 above the waves. May we not also fairly surmise that the 

 sportive element, which had arbitrarily disposed of the fossil 

 exuviae, would also, by a succession of retiring tides, leave, in- 

 discriminately, its vast flotillas of the uprooted spoils and 

 refuse of the antediluvian forests in the deeper recesses of the 

 earth, in the insulated situations they now occupyjn the charac- 

 ter of coals ; and of the immediate existence of which we have 

 certain infallible indications, ordained by the all-wise Director 

 and Disposer of all created things for the direction and assist- 

 ance of the " practical explorer ; " who, by the evidence of 

 these indications has been led to the discovery of those im- 

 mense treasures which have proved the mainspring of the 

 activity, prosperity, and glory of the British nation. 



I will now proceed to show that " local indications" are to 

 be found in this district, presenting their silent but incon- 

 trovertible testimonies of the immediate presence of mineral 

 riches, concealed here, in the subjacent regions of the earth. 

 Passing over the numerous veins, detached masses of smuts 

 and coal (as being indicative, only upon more general prin- 

 ciples, of a coal neighbourhood) so numerously scattered 

 throughout the diluvium or compound beds which principally 

 constitute the multifarious undulations of this (the eastern) 

 division of Leicestershire ; the first thing worthy of notice is 

 the circumstance of the vestigia of coal, and all its concomi- 

 tants^ being found, generally speaking, immediately below the 

 surface of the ground, in one continuous line, traversing this 

 field in a direction due N.E. and S. W. ; five miles of which 

 have been minutely explored by myself, and its real character 

 and importance ascertained and declared by several expe- 

 rienced scientific and practical men. From the outcrop, these 



