180 ON THE ORIGIN OF COAL. 



advocates of this theory, comprising Jamieson, 

 De Luc, Brongniart, and others, gave strong 

 evidence in support of their views ; but their 

 supposition, of raising and depressing the surface 

 of the earth so as to have it alternately land and 

 water for every seam of Coal, was not borne out 

 by any such similar changes of position now ob- 

 served on the crust of the globe. Mr. Bowman's 

 paper on the origin of Coal, published in the 1st 

 volume of the transactions of the Manchester 

 Geological Society, is unquestionably the most 

 valuable treatise on forming Coal by subsidence ; 

 and satisfactorily accounts for the dividing, thick- 

 ening, and thinning of seams of Coal, and was the 

 most useful memoir on the origin of Coal which 

 had then appeared. 



It was owing to the observations of Mr. Charles 

 Darwin, on the coast of Patagonia, that geologists 

 were first presented with a series of phenomena 

 of the gradual rising of land, it then being in a 

 state of repose, for a considerable period, and again 

 rising. This alternation of elevation and repose 

 being repeated many times. Upon first reading 

 his work, I immediately saw a series of phenomena, 

 the reverse of which, I had long been convinced, 

 had taken place during the formation of our beds 



