■91"] STEVEXSON— FORMATION OF COAL BEDS. Ill 



positively that in this area peat bogs are excluded from consid- 

 eration.""^ 



The third illustration is from the basin of Vendee, which is an 

 isoclinal formation in an isoclinal valley, bounded on one side by a 

 fault. The reference to this area is brief. Lemiere states that the 

 phenomena of the faisceaux at the north and the dips in the basin 

 suggest, a priori, that here one has a case of peat bog formation. 

 But he plots the conditions in a diagram and states that, as shown 

 thus, they are evidently due to influence of the fault. 



He concludes that the French coals as well as those of the 

 Franco-Belgian basin are not old peat bogs but are of alluvial origin 

 and that the same conclusion is probable for the coal beds of North 

 America. These conclusions do not proscribe the theory of peat 

 bogs ; on the contrary they appropriate those conditions and their 

 results. All that is insisted on is that, at present, we can find no 

 trace of successive deepenings of feeble amplitude and repeated for 

 each bed; but there are evidences of many subsidences, important or 

 at distant intervals, corresponding to the faisceaux of beds. 



Lemiere, feeling himself no longer in danger of being paralyzed 

 by the question. Is coal formed /';/ situ or as alluvium?, proceeds to 

 show wherein his doctrine dififers from other forms of the transport 

 theory. As the distinction depends in great measure on his con- 

 ception of the mode in which vegetable matter was converted into 

 coal, the details have no place here. 



This extended reference to Lemiere's publications is justified by 

 the fact that he has presented the characteristic of the transport 

 theory more fully than most of his predecessors and has attempted 

 to explain all the conditions as far as they are known to him. 



Stainier.'"' whose numerous contributions will find consideration 

 in another connection, believes that formation of coal beds is essen- 

 tially a geological problem and he maintains that geologists have 

 been negligent in that they have left the discussion too long to the 

 palseobotanists. Fayol and Grand' Eury, by studying the matter 



""The diagram, illustrating the structure in this second case, shows a 

 bounding fault on one side, such as limits the little basins in France. 



"' X. Stainier. " De la formation des gisemcnts houillers," Bull. Soc. 

 Bclgc dc Gcol, XX.. igo6. p. V., pp. 112-114. 



Ill 



