LONE BURIALS IN THE COAL LANDS. 173 



tion from type to type. We glimpse the stalkiDg forms of 

 bird-like reptiles as we uncover the tracks which they made 

 in the world's middle ages; but we drop the curtain to raise 

 it again in another scene. 



XXX. L/ONE BURIALS IN THE COAL L/ANDS. 



COAL-MEASURE FOSSILS. 



STILL deeper in the series of strata which compose the up- 

 per portion of the earth's crust, we come to the coal-beds 

 which were described in Talk XXVI. We wish now to con- 

 sider very briefly the organic forms which the coal' strata in- 

 close. We refer here to coal strata of " Carboniferous Age," 

 such as found in the United States east of the Rocky Mount- 

 ains excepting the Richmond and Deep River fields in 

 Virginia and North Carolina. You will remember that we de- 

 tected evidences of the vegetable origin of the coal. We con- 

 clude that it was formed from trees and herbaceous plants 

 which had grown in the places where the coal accumulated. 

 Generally, that ancient vegetation has become broken, com- 

 minuted and decayed like the forest leaves gathered in a 

 pile and left to the influence of the weather during one or two 

 seasons. Still, many distinct traces of the coal-plants lie bed- 

 ded in the formless rubbish of the ancient forest. Pressed 

 upon the black surfaces of the shales are innumerable tracer- 

 ies of fern fronds, with all the sharpness of pinnations and 

 bipinnations, their serrations and acuminations, as neatly 

 preserved as if gathered last week from the forest and pressed 

 by careful hands for the herbarium. It is an interesting 

 sight ; it fills our minds with reflections. Down four hundred 

 feet in the solid earth, reposing in darkness and silence through 

 all the ages of our human history, have these elegant pictures 

 been lying forms out of a vanished world types of times 

 which passed while terrestrial life was still in its infancy, and 

 vegetation had not yet learned to blossom in the hues of the 

 violet and the rose. 



