246 Mr. Fairholme on the Nature of Coal, and on 



character; its colour; its combustible nature, which is found 

 in no other mineral ; its frequently displaying a distinct lig- 

 neous texture; and, in corroboration of these, the conclusive 

 experiments and reasoning of many able chemists; — all tend 

 distinctly to prove that the arguments formerly maintained by 

 some geologists, who considered it an original chemical forma- 

 tion, entirely unconnected with a vegetable origin, may now 

 be classed amongst various other concessions which have, of 

 late years, been made to the Wernerian theory. 



Setting out, then, upon the principle that coal is, in every 

 situation, a mineralized vegetable substance, and, consequently, 

 that it derived its origin from successive depositions in water 

 of the vegetable productions of former periods, it becomes a 

 point of the highest interest to speculate upon the manner in 

 which this deposition must have probably taken place; and 

 upon the evidences which the attendant phenomena may ex- 

 hibit, as to the period of time which was occupied in the pro- 

 cess. 



The first point which arrests our attention in the considera- 

 tion of the coal-fields of every quarter of the world, is their 

 being invariably situated in similar districts, and their exhi- 

 biting, on every scale of magnitude, the form of the basin. 

 I am not aware of any exception to this fact in any part of 

 the world in which coal has been discovered. In forming an 

 idea, however, of those basin-shaped hollows in which the ve- 

 getable deposits have taken place, we must not be misled by 

 attaching to them a great regularity, or roundness of form. 

 On the contrary, the coal basins are found to be as diversified 

 in form, as the various lakes and valleys now existing on the 

 present surface of the earth. We find in some places such 

 basins of not more than a mile in diameter, and which, in the 

 hills of theWest Riding of Yorkshire, are termed sxmlleys, filled 

 like the larger basins with coal and its usual attendant strata. 

 In other districts of greater extent the basin obtains the name 

 of a Ji eld, extending over many miles of country, but differing 

 in no other material degree from the smaller basins to which 

 I have just alluded. These distinct basin-shaped deposits 

 have greatly tended to support the theory of coal being a la- 

 custrine formation, in the supposition that such basins were, 

 at very remote periods, and for a prodigious lapse of years, 

 filled with fresh water; and that the deposition of vegetable 

 substances took place by a slow and very gradual process, and 

 by the submersion of such vegetables as either grew on their 

 shores, or were washed into them by rivers. This mode 

 of accounting for the coal strata, which has long been consi- 

 dered as the most plausible by geologists, is open to insupera- 



