HOW OUR COAL WAS MADE 225 



Think of our common horse rushes, slender stalks, 

 scarcely ten inches high, growing as trees taller 

 than your house and as large around as a tub. It is 

 difficult to imagine how they would look, is it not? 



Do you know the club moss that grows upon the 

 mountains and the ground-pine that is twined into 

 wreaths and festoons for Christmas decorations? 

 Try to think of these as trees, queer, rough trees, 

 three times as tall as your house and as large around 

 as a cartwheel. The thick, bristling branches were 

 covered with long scales, instead of leaves, which 

 dropped off, giving place to new ones, as the pine 

 needles do. 



In the wet, swampy forest land ferns grew in as 

 pretty clusters as they do in our swamps, their 

 graceful fronds almost sweeping the surface of the 

 shallow water. Some of the ferns were very small, 

 with dainty little fronds that were almost lost in the 

 immensity of the dark forest. Some grew so large 

 that they made trees like the tree ferns that grow 

 now in tropical forests. Like the tropical ferns they 

 had tall, thick trunks, with a bunch of long fronds 

 drooping from the top. So the forests stretched 

 out, dark and somber, with pools of still, black 

 water lying between the huge trunks of the trees, 

 and reflecting in the dim light the groups of pretty 

 ferns. 



But there was no bright green grass filling in 

 every nook and corner between the roots of the 

 trees; no plants covered with brightly colored 

 flowers, no fruits, no spreading foliage. Silent, too, 

 was the forest, for there were no leaves to rustle. 



