140 THE ORIGIN OP CREATION. 



Prof. Rogers in " Good Words," 1863, has two interesting 

 articles on " Coal and Petroleum " which contain the latest 

 ideas on the subject; but the statements are so faulty, and 

 show such unacquaintance with natural law, that we propose, 

 firstly, to detail how the popular idea of the formation is 

 incorrect, and secondly, to show how coal is really formed. 



Prof. Rogers' theory is, that the coal-producing vegetation 

 grew in a bog or swamp, that it was of colossal dimensions, and 

 as each season's growth decayed, it sunk into a sort of peat. A 

 succession of earthquakes then occurred, gradually sinking the 

 coal measures to their present level. The vegetation being all 

 compressed hard, petroleum and other mineral oils and juices 

 soaked through the substance, and the whole field was then 

 baked into coal by the earth's internal fire ; those masses which 

 were nearest the interior being baked the hardest, and thus it is 

 we have the hard anthracite, and the common soft coal. 



This theory seems very plausible, but as we will show, it 

 cannot be sustained by facts. A forest, it is said, will only 

 make half an inch of coal. How many hundreds of forests then 

 must have grown, or how luxurious must have been the growth, 

 in order to produce a coal field, which, with its shale, is fre- 

 quently found three or four hundred feet thick. 



Prof. Rogers, in order to account for the luxurious vegeta- 

 tion, enters into a speculation, which shows how little is really 

 known of natural phenomena, seen by us every day. A tree, he, 

 as well as all other teachers say, is mainly composed of carbon. 

 This substance it absorbs from the atmosphere, and according 

 to the amount of carbon, so is the quantity of vegetation. In 

 the coal-producing ages, therefore, there must have been an 

 incalculable amount of carbon in the atmosphere, for the 



