1911] STEVENSON— FORMATION OF COAL BEDS. 685 



them, than to conceive that the deposit was made between them 

 where they grew and were firmly rooted. 



The discovery, near Manchester, England, of erect stumps, led 

 several members of the London Geological Society to visit the local- 

 ity. Hawkshaw^^'' in 1839 and 1840 described five erect stumps 

 and he was firmly convinced that they were in the place of growth. 

 Bowman^^' in discussing the same occurrence, asserted that the loss 

 of roots in the ^Manchester specimens was due to a process of fer- 

 mentation. He combatted the notion that floated trees would remain 

 erect, maintaining that, when they ceased to float, they would turn 

 over. Several years afterward, Beckett and Sparrow^^^ discov- 

 ered some erect stumps near Wolverhampton, England. Beckett 

 removed the coal attached to one of the trees. The stump was per- 

 fectly " bitumenized "' but broken oft' at about 2 inches above the 

 top of the coal, the inner portion being hollowed out to about the 

 level of the coal. The stem was not flattened ; it was approximately 

 4 feet in circumference and the roots spread out in a broad mass. 

 The trunk and roots were covered with one half inch of bark, con- 

 verted into brighter, more compact coal than that of the interior 

 which was a mixture of coal and shale. The coal bed is about 5 

 inches thick. A few years later, Jukes^^^ visited this locality with 

 Beckett and, in writing about the stumps, he conceded that " they 

 certainly looked as if they had grown there, and perhaps they may 

 have done so, but even so, it by no means settles the question" [of 

 origin of coal beds]. 



Beckett expressed no opinion respecting the original relations of 

 the forest, but his paper is followed directly by Ick's^''° description, 

 which is more in detail. The surface of the coal had been exposed 

 by stripping in a rudely triangular space of about 2,700 square yards. 

 Upward of 70 stumps were seen on this terrace, some of them more 



^^'' J. Hawkshaw, Proc. London Gcol. Soc, Vol. III., pp. 140, 269. 



'"'J. E. Bowman, Ibid., pp. 270, 271, 274. 



'"" H. Beckett, Quart. Journ. Geol. See. Vol. I., 1845, pp. 41, 42. 



'='J. B. Jukes, "The South Staffordshire Coal-field," 2d Ed., 1859, p. 201, 

 footnote. 



^°"W. Ick, "A Description of Numerous Fossil Dicotyledonous Trees at 

 Parkfield Colliery near Bilston," Ibid., pp. 43-45. 



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