198 FORMATION OF COAL. 



considerable favour among scientific men, and accounts for change 

 of climate by an alteration in the distribution of land and sea. 

 He contends, that were land massed about the equator, strong 

 currents of hot air would be carried to the Arctic circle, and the 

 climate there would be such that tropical plants could flourish. 

 Other theories attribute the change to an alteration in the course of 

 the gulf stream, but none of them have been deemed thoroughly 

 satisfactory. Some years ago Geologists looked to astronomy to 

 solve the problem, and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit was 

 brought into question, but the idea never gained much attention till 

 Mr. Croll reproduced it with additions.* He has shown that the 

 eccentricity of the earth's orbit and the movement of the axis, 

 together with other physical conditions, would quite account for the 

 changes in climate which the earth has undergone so many times 

 since the Creator first launched our planet into space. 



WJiat Plants formed Coal. The question as to which plants 

 formed coal is a very difficult one to answer. Professor Huxley 

 has stated that several sections of coal, microscopically examined, 

 have revealed spores of plants, and I believe that the theory has 

 been advanced, of coal being entirely formed of spores, at any rate 

 the Bituminous portion of it. But I cannot conceive of small 

 spores accumulating in such dense masses as to form seams of coal 

 several feet thick. Professor Dana states that it would take 8-feet 

 in depth of compact vegetable matter to make one foot of Bituminous 

 coal, owing to shrinkage by decomposition and pressure. 



I shall presently show that the vegetable matter forming coal 

 has been submerged by water, and I could conceive of large 

 accumulations of spores being carried down with the sediment of 

 a river and being so deposited ; but then there would be so much 

 mud and sediment intermixed as to make the formation worthless 

 as a coal, though a shale might result. In the Geological Magazine 

 volume for 1875, ^^ a paper by Mr. E. T. Newton, F.G.S., in 



* " Climate and Time." 



