104 TOWN GEOLOGY. [iv. 



a depth of several hundred feet, just such a mass of 

 beds as exists in our own coal-fields at this day. 



If, therefore, the reader wishes to picture to him- 

 self the scenery of what is now central England, 

 during the period when our coal was being laid down, 

 he has only, I believe, to transport himself in fancy to 

 any great alluvial delta, in a moist and warm climate, 

 favourable to the growth of vegetation. He has only 

 to conceive wooded marshes, at the mouth of great 

 rivers, slowly sinking beneath the sea ; the forests in 

 them killed by the water, and then covered up by 

 layers of sand, brought down from inland, till that 

 new layer became dry land, to carry a fresh crop of 

 vegetation. He has thus all that he needs to explain 

 how coal-measures were formed. I myself saw once 

 a scene of that kind, which I should be sorry to forget ; 

 for there was, as I conceived, coal, making, or getting 

 ready to be made, before my eyes : a sheet of swamp, 

 sinking slowly into the sea ; for there stood trees, still 

 rooted below high-water mark, and killed by the 

 waves ; while inland huge trees stood dying, or dead, 

 from the water at their roots. But what a scene a 

 labyrinth of narrow creeks, so narrow that a canoe 

 could not pass up, haunted with alligators and boa- 

 constrictors, parrots and white herons, amid an inex- 

 tricable coDf usion of vegetable mud, roots of the alder- 

 like mangroves, and tangled creepers hanging from, 

 tree to tree ; and overhead huge fan-palms, delighting 

 in the moisture, mingled with still huger broad-leaved 

 trees in every stage of decay. The drowned vegetable 

 soil of ages beneath me ; above my head, for a 

 hundred feet, a mass of stems and boughs, and leaves 

 and flowers, compared with which the richest hothouse 



