372 Mr. Lyell on the Coal Field of Tuscaloosa, Ala. 
the falls of the Warrior River, the principal tributary of the 
Tombecbee, and that it was used for the manufacture of gas at 
Mobile, I suspected that it might be related to the Richmond 
coal, which is bituminous, situated near the falls of the James 
River, and placed nearer the Atlantic than the coal of the Alle- 
gheny range, than which it has also been shown to be newer in 
date, by Prof. W. B. Rogers. 
In order to determine, if possible, its chronological relations, 
and obtain information respecting its extent, I ascended the 'Tom- 
bechee, from Mobile to Tuscaloosa, where, at the University, I 
found Prof. Brumby, who had examined with considerable care 
the geographical boundaries of the productive coal measures, and 
the structure of the region. With him, I made an excursion to 
some of the pits, or rather open quarries of coal, where the edges 
of the beds of several seams have been dug into by different 
individuals, entirely ignorant of mining operations, but with no 
small success, the quality being good at the points of natural out- 
crop. I found the coal seams every where covered with beds of 
ordinary black carbonaceous shale, full of impressions of more 
than one species of Calamite, with ferns of the genera Pecopteris 
and Neuropteris, and impressions of Sigillaria and Lepidodendron. - 
In some of the beds, Stigmaria has also been met with not 
unfrequently. I recognize a specific identity between several of 
the most common of these coal plants and those of Europe, Ohio, 
and Pennsylvania, and I observe that they are completely differ- 
ent from the vegetable remains that are most abundant and char- 
acteristic in the newer or Virginian coal field, near Richmond, 
which I had lately an opportunity of examining on my Way 
South. The strike also of the coal beds of Alabama, on the 
Warrior River, where I saw them, and those of a coal field im- 
mediately to the east, examined by Prof. Brumby, is northeast 
and southwest, agreeing with the general direction of the Alle- 
gheny Mountains, of which, geologically speaking, they are evi- 
dently a southern prolongation. They are in fact portions of 
the great Apalachian coal field, exhibiting all the same mine 
and paleontological characters, the beds having been bent into 
anticlinal and synclinal ridges, similar to those of the Alleghenies, _ 
with corresponding dips to northwest and southeast. _ 
Alabama is the first state, as we proceed from the northeast, 
where we can pass from the Atlantic plain, occupied by tertiary 
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