120 THE STOEY OP THE EAIITH AND MAK. 



to the millions of delicate ferns and club-mosses, not 

 unlike those of our modern woods, which carpet the 

 ground. Around us for hundreds of miles spreads 

 a dense and monotonous forest, with here and there 

 open spaces occupied by ponds and sluggish streams, 

 whose edges are bordered with immense savannahs 

 of reed-like plants, springing from the wet and boggy 

 soil. Everything bespeaks a rank exuberance of 

 vegetable growth ; and if we were to dig downward 

 into the soil, we should find a thick bed of vegetable 

 mould evidencing the prevalence of such conditions 

 for ages. But the time will come when this immense 

 flat will meet with the fate which in modern times 

 befel a large district at the mouth of the Indus. 

 Quietly, or with earthquake shocks, it will sink 

 under the waters; fishes and mollusks will swarm 

 where trees grew, beds of sand and mud will be 

 deposited by the water, inclosing and preserving 

 the remains of the vegetation, and in some places 

 surrounding and imbedding the still erect trunks 

 of trees. Many feet of such deposits may be formed, 

 and our forest surface, with its rich bed of vegetable 

 mould, has been covered up and is in process of 

 transformation into coal ; while in course of time 

 the shallow waters being filled up with deposit, or 

 a slight re-elevation occurring, a new forest exactly 

 like the last will flourish on the same spot. Such 

 changes would be far beyond the compass of the 

 life even of a Methuselah ; but had we lived in the 

 Coal period, we might have seen all stages of thesa 



