220 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 



coal brought out of the levels. It is clearly the product, 

 not of a bed of peat produced by the decay of small 

 vegetation, but of a mass of huge timber. At least one 

 half of the mass displays the grain and structure of wood, 

 and frequently it separates naturally into the concentric 

 layers of dicotyledonous wood. All the specimens I have 

 examined have exactly the structure of the dipteraceous 

 trees now forming the bulk of the timber growing above 

 them. The trees must have been of vast dimensions. I 

 traced one trunk upwards of 60 feet, and for the whole 

 of that distance it was not less than 8 feet wide. They 

 are all prostrate and slightly compressed, and lie crossing 

 each other in all directions. What makes the resemblance 

 of this coal to the wood of the Dipteracese still more 

 striking is the existence in it of thickly scattered masses 

 of semi-transparent resin dispersed through its substance. 

 The clay below the coal contains a few carbonaceous 

 particles, but no trace of Stigmaria or any other forms of 

 fossil roots. In the shale above the coal are found 

 occasionally erect trunks of small size, apparently, from 

 the coats of their bark, dicotyledonous, but their whole 

 substance converted into soft pulverulent coal ; and, more 

 rarely, palm trunks, also erect but solidified, and excess- 

 ively hard. Impressions- of leaves are in vast abundance, 

 though rarely perfect. I have procured specimens of 

 nine species of dicotyledons, of wliich two so closely re- 

 semble an existing species of Barringtonia and a diptera- 

 ceous plant which yields an oily resin named ' druing,' 

 that it is difticult to believe them not identical. Besides 

 these are two or three species of ferns, a large flag-shaped 

 leaf like a Crinum, something closely resembling a large 

 thick-stemmed confervoid alga, and four or five species of 

 palms, one flabelliform and four pinnate, one of the latter 

 very closely resembling an existing species. These vege- 



