106 TOWN GEOLOGY. [IT. 



of cultivation instead of fossil Lepidodendra and 

 Sigillariae, Calamites and ferns, fossil ashes and oaks, 

 alders and poplars, bulrushes and reeds. Almost the 

 only fossil fern would have been that tall and beautiful 

 Lastrsea Thelypteris, once so abundant, now all but 

 destroyed by drainage and the plough. 



We need not, therefore, fancy any extraordinary 

 state of things on this planet while our English coal 

 was being formed. The climate of the northern 

 hemisphere Britain, at least, and Nova Scotia was 

 warmer than now, to judge from the abundance of 

 ferns ; and especially of tree-ferns ; but not so warm, 

 to judge from the presence of conifers (trees of the 

 pine tribe), as the Tropics. Moreover, there must 

 have been, it seems to me, a great scarcity of animal 

 life. Insects are found, beautifully preserved ; a few 

 reptiles, too, and land-shells ; but very few. And 

 where are the traces of such a swarming life as would 

 be entombed were a tropic forest now sunk; which 

 is found entombed in many parts of our English fens ? 

 The only explanation which I can offer is this that 

 the club-mosses, tree-ferns, pines, and other low- 

 ranked vegetation of the coal afforded little or no food 

 for animals, as the same families of plants do to this 

 day ; and if creatures can get nothing to eat, they 

 certainly cannot multiply and replenish the earth. 

 But, be that as it may, the fact that coal is buried 

 forest is not affected. 



Meanwhile, the shape and arrangements of sea 

 and land must have been utterly different from what 

 they are now. Where was that great land, off which 

 great rivers ran to deposit our coal-measures in their 

 deltas ? It has been supposed, for good reasons, that 



