642 STEVEXSOX— FORMATION OF COAL BEDS. [November 3. 



The occurrence of drifted logs and clumps of vegetation is a 

 phenomenon as familiar as that of buried forests ; indeed, in the 

 nature of the case, it is more familiar, as coarse rocks are more 

 widely spread than are the coaly deposits. The battered snags of 

 the Missouri-Mississippi and the logs scattered through the delta 

 silts ; the similar accumulations in tertiary deposits of the Missouri 

 and Mackenzie ; in the London Clay and on the New Siberia islands ; 

 the irregular pots of lignite in many places on the continent of Eu- 

 rope ; the driftwood in our Newark formation; and the vast abun- 

 dance of snags, logs and branches in sandstones of the Coal Meas- 

 ures in Europe and America ; all bear witness, as do the buried 

 forests, that conditions have undergone no material change since the 

 closing epochs of the Paljeozoic. These drifted materials are every- 

 where distinguishable from plants buried i}i situ, for they have been 

 deprived of all tender parts ; of the harder woods in Carboniferous 

 times there are few traces except decorticated stems, casts of the 

 interior, indeterminate forms grouped under Kiiorria, Stcrnhcrgia 

 and some other names. 



Conclusions. — It is strange that there should be such intense un- 

 willingness to accept evidence in favor of the existence of ancient 

 forests. Reasoning from existing conditions, one would have room 

 for disappointment if such forests were not discovered in the older 

 rocks; yet some authors seem to believe that one is chargeable with 

 overcredulity if he regard buricfl stumps as rooted in place when 

 they occur in the Coal Measures and his proof is demanded as 

 emphatically as though he had asserted that man's normal position 

 is with his head on the ground and his feet pointing skyward. The 

 abrupt termination of stumps on the coal and the absence of roots 

 are, for some, positive evidence that the trees are not in loco natali, 

 though the condition is that which must come about in the cypress 

 swamps of this day; the number of prostrate trunks predominates 

 over that of erect stumps, and this is taken as evidence that all alike 

 were transported ; yet every great forested swamp shows that broken 

 and overturned stems fall to be preserved in moist surrounding, 

 while manv stumps remain exposed to atmospheric action and, in 

 large part, decay. The very presence of the stump itself is taken 



240 



