74 



brown coal, bitumenous coal and anthracite had their origin from 

 the lower forms of life, where they merge on the vegetable or on the 

 other side the animai. Including thus the layers of peat which have 

 recently been revealed in Bound Brook Park, New Jersey. This is 

 a public park that has laid out in Newark, New Jersey. Here the layers 

 are peat, almost black in color which goes down about two feet, 

 sometimes three, underlaid by clay which is blueish at the top mer- 

 ging into almost white. Bcneath ali is a red gravel which is moraine. 

 This is thirty to sixty feet thick. It rests on the red sandstone, the 

 Newark sandstone as it is known as and probblematic the Triassic 

 or Juro-Triassic of Dana. 



I (ind that the etymology of peat is doubtfull according to the 

 books. Skeat we are told, considers the true form to be beat, from 

 its being used to be forming lire, from the middle English beten, 

 to replenish the fire. At ali event it must have been used to build 

 fires where wood was scarce and long before coal was used for 

 this is comparitivelv modem use. 



In most geological books it is said to be formed from sphagnum, 

 a moss or similar waterplants which decomppsed and were per- 

 mitted to decay. I think that sphagnum or similar moss have not 

 thing to do with the formation of peat, for the microscope fails to 

 reveal traces of them in any peat which I have examined. I rather 

 think it was formed from the lower plants and Pratista it was for- 

 med from the lower plants and Pratista and also from Bacillaria. 

 These latter are placed in the Pratista by IIaeckel. Navicula viridis, 

 F. T. K. an extremly common form of Bacillaria which is in the 

 peat which I have examined. 



The origin of petroleum and consequently of asphaltum has spe- 

 ciali}' engaged my attention ever since I first undertook the exami- 

 nation of earths for the California State Geological Survey, and that 

 wàs many years ago. For among the infusorial earths were certain 

 things which had traces in them of asphaltum and that was at Mon- 

 terey in California where Pro. Blake had first seen the Diatomaceous, 

 or, as it is now called the Bacillarian strafa. Some years after I joined 

 the Survey I got some specimens from the Bailey collection in Bo- 

 ston Society of Naturai History and they were one of the originai 

 ones given by Blake to Bailey. Some of these were hard and called 



