Notices respecting New Books. 383 



which enables us to trace the history, as it were, of the past con- 

 dition, the present adaptation of the primaeval flora ; that magnificent 

 vegetation which amidst the mutations of our planet yet survives for 

 our use ; its character changed, it is true, but only to become more 

 serviceable to man." 



" A happy provision was it that secured for the ultimate advantage 

 of the human race, ages before its appearance upon the globe, the 

 trees of gigantic size, the densely growing shrubs, the most delicate 

 even of the lesser plants — that flora which covered in such pro- 

 fusion the islands and plateaux, and filled the humid valleys, of the 

 early world. A happy provision was it that, amidst the early ca- 

 tastrophes of the earth, those convulsions which modified its entire 

 surface, overwhelmed its primaeval forests, and buried them beneath 

 enormous accumulations of earthy debris, of sediment, and of rocky 

 debacle, — still perpetuated and matured, during the lapse of countless 

 ages, that primitive vegetation which finally, in the form of mineral 

 combustibles, we are now busy in exploring, mining, and appro- 

 priating in a thousand ways and for a thousand purposes. A happy 

 provision was that, — a beneficent one surely, — by which, at the mo- 

 ment when man is compelled to level the existing forests to make 

 room for the progress of agriculture and the cultivation of the present 

 surface, he finds nigh at hand, yet buried beneath that surface 

 within the shallow basins and woody islands of the antediluvian world, 

 those inexhaustible stores of a combustible now rendered infinitely 

 more precious and effective than that existing vegetable fuel whose 

 destruction is the inevitable consequence of advancing civilization." 

 (P. Ixxxiv.) 



It must be very obvious that the labour of collecting the materials 

 for a volume so wide in its scope, so multifarious in the subject- 

 matters of which it treats, must have been very great, and the task 

 one of great difficulty. " The information required was not access- 

 ible in any single work, nor even in a number of works : it was no- 

 where to be found." In a work like this it is no slight matter to 

 have gathered together, in an accessible shape, certain and definite 

 information which may be used as a key by other inquirers in indi- 

 vidual regions or departments ; which may have something of the 

 character of a complete skeleton by which the general relations of 

 the various parts of the subject may be seen. That imperfections 

 should be found to exist in the work when any single part is sub- 

 mitted to a rigid test, is a necessary result from the very nature of 

 the subject, in which new facts are hourly arising and being re- 

 corded. But the value of this, as a general work of reference, will 

 not thereby be lessened. 



There is one cause of the difficulty with which our author has had 

 to grapple on which it is not uninteresting to remark. This is the 

 circumstance that, while there are " oflScial" returns and other do- 

 cuments in all the continental countries of Europe, none such exist in 

 the two by far most important coal-producing countries in the world, 

 namely Great Britain and the United States of America. Our author 

 several times calls attention to this circumstance, as having occa- 



