460 ORIGIN OF THE APPALACHIAN COAL STRATA, 



nia, Virginia, and Ohio, in proof of the frequency of the contact 

 of the coal-seams and beds of limestone; but I have been dis- 

 posed to establish the fact, chiefly, from instances in different 

 portions of the formation, and to show, that the contiguity of the 

 coal and limestone is often maintained throughout a consider- 

 able extent of country. 



Theory of the Origin of the Coal Strata. 



Having presented what, I triist, is a sufficiently full sketch of 

 the leading phenomena of the Appalachian coal-measures, and 

 shown theh' correspondence, in several essential features of struc- 

 ture, to the coal-formation of Europe, I shall proceed now to 

 consider what inferences we are entitled to draw respecting their 

 origin, and that of the coal-formation generally. But, before 

 taking this theoretical survey, it will be expedient to state, suc- 

 cinctly, the views of the several eminent geologists, who have 

 recently written on this subject. I feel it the more incumbent to 

 do this, since some of the speculations I shall advance are but 

 modifications of hypotheses already published. 



From a passage in Mi\ Ly ell's admirable work on the Ele- 

 ments of Geology, it appears, that M. Adolphe Brongniart, after 

 comparing the phenomena of the ancient coal, and its fossil 

 plants, with the great peat-mosses of the present day, states, in a 

 memoir published in 1838, that he continues to adhere to the opin- 

 ions originally advanced by Werner and De Luc, that the vegeta- 

 tion entombed in the carboniferous stra'ta, chiefly grew in the 

 localities where the coal is now found.* Whether Mi". Brong- 

 niart, however, endeavors to conform this view to all the phenom- 

 ena of the coal-measures, under any general theory of their 

 origin, I am not informed, not having seen his memoir. 



Mr. Hawkshaw, in a communication to the Geological Society 

 of London, in 1839, describes the remarkable phenomenon of five 

 fossil trees, exposed in a cutting on the Manchester and Bolton 

 railway, standing erect in relation to a bed of coal, eight or ten 



• Lyell's Elements, Vol. II, p. 135, Boston edition. 



