140 SCIENCE IK SHOUT CHAPTERS. 



structure, and, after all, we continue almost as much in the 

 dark respecting the invertebrate air-breathers of this epoch, as 

 if the coal had been thrown down in mid-ocean. The early date 

 of the carboniferous strata cannot explain the enigma, because 

 we know that while the land supported a luxuriant vegetation, 

 the contemporaneous seas swarmed with life with Aiticulata, 

 Mollusca, Radiata, and Fishes. We must, therefore, collect 

 more facts if we expect to solve a problem which, in the 

 present state of science, cannot but excite our wonder ; and we 

 must remember how much the conditions of this problem have 

 varied within the last twenty years. We must be content to 

 impute the scantiness of our data and our present perplexity 

 partly to our want of diligence as collectors, and paitly to our 

 want of skill as interpreters. We must also confess that our 

 ignorance is great of the laws which govern the fossilization of 

 land animals, whether of low or high degree." 



The explanation of the origin of coal which I have given in 

 the foregoing meets all these difficulties. It shows how vast 

 accumulations of vegetable matter may have been formed " in 

 close connection with the ancient land," and yet " as if the coal 

 had been thrown down in mid-ocean" as far as the remains of 

 terrestrial animals are concerned. It explains the nearly total 

 absence of land shells, and of the remains of other animals that 

 must have lived in the forests producing the coal, and which 

 would have been buried there with the coal had it been formed 

 on land as usually supposed. It also meets the cases of the 

 rare and curious exceptions, seeing that occasionally a land 

 animal would here and there be drowned in such liords under 

 circumstances favorable to its fossilization. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE SOLAR ECLIPSE OF 1871 THE FIRST TELEGRAMS. 



THIS time we may fairly expect some approach to a solution 

 of the riddle of the corona, as the one essential which neither 

 scientific skill nor Government liberality could secure to the 

 eclipse observers, has been afforded viz. fine weather. The 

 telegraph has already informed us of this, and also that good 



