NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PRIMEVAL WORLD. 



IlLGyinnogeus. |3- ^tjrlioa l .aniili.K> Conifers&cycadi 



i Composite, legn- 

 (4. Dicotyledonous angio- J minosa?, unibel- 



IV. Exogens. 



V. Endogens. 5. Monocotyledons. 



) liferae, cruci- 

 ( feras, hea 

 jPalms,lilies,aloes, 

 ( rushes, grasse 



A recent writer has attempted to describe a carbon- 

 iferous forest. The grass would be composed, he says 

 of herbaceous ferns and mare's-tail a lacustrine vege- 

 tation shaded by the boughs of lofty trees. Here 

 would tower a huge lepidodendron, with naked leafless 

 trunk, and there a sigillaria, with a stigmaria at their 

 foot, stretching its long roots covered with reproductive 

 spores into the muddy, reeking waters. Numerous 

 sphenophyllums raise their graceful pyramidal-shaped 

 masses, terminating in a bud not unlike the cabbage- 

 palm. Ah 1 this rich, vegetable growth, under the 

 influence of a hot sun and heavy rains, is constantly 

 decomposing, and so gradually forming a rich, fertile 

 humus or mould, to provide for the development of an 

 entirely new generation of plants in a succeeding age. 



From their partial decomposition were also being 

 produced vast stores of fuel for the future benefit of 

 the coming Man. These great forests, these wide 

 tracts of ferns and grasses, were the origin of coal. 

 At first the submerged plants would be a light spongy 

 mass, resembling very closely the peat-moss of our 

 northern moors and marshes. While under water 

 these underwent a partial decomposition a fermenta- 

 tion, whose different chemical phases, we are told, 

 cannot be exactly defined. It is certain, however, 

 that this decomposition and fermentation of the peat- 

 mosses of the primeval world was accompanied by the 

 production of considerable quantities of carburetted 

 hydrogen, either in a gaseous or a liquid form. Thence 

 result the hydrocarbon with which all coal is impreg- 

 nated, and the tar oils which have penetrated the 

 bituminous schists. " This emission of bicarburetted 

 hydrogen gas," says M. Figuier,* " would probably 

 continue until after the peat-beds were buried beneath 

 the strata eventually deposited upon them. The mere 

 weight and pressure of the superincumbent mass, con- 

 tinued at an increased ratio during successive ages, 

 have given to the coal its characteristic density, and 

 its state of aggregation." 



But though, owing to the wonderful luxuriance of 

 vegetation then prevailing, the greater portion of our 

 coal-beds seem to have been formed in the period we 

 are now describing, we must remind the reader that 

 they have also been found in other formations, as in 

 the oolite, the wealden. and the tertiary. In truth, 

 as Dr. Page has justly remarked, coal is the product of 

 every period, because it is simply the mineralized result 

 of vegetable accumulation, and that accumulation is 

 due to immensity of time rather than to rapidity of 

 growth. 



The difference existing in the mineral characters of 

 various kinds of coal is partly attributable to the 

 amount of pressure, and partly to the greater or lesser 

 heat given out by the central fires of the earth. The 

 inferior beds are invariably drier and denser than the 

 * Fignier : The World Before the Deluge. 



upper ones, or less bituminous, because "their mineral- 

 ization, so to speak, has been completed under the 

 influence of a higher temperature, and, at the same 

 time, under a greater pressure." 



It may be of service to the reader if we here intro- 

 duce an estimate of the 



AREA OF THE COAL MEASURES OF THE WORLD. 



Square Miles. 

 North America (chiefly in the United States), . . 310,500 



Great Britain, 6,200 



France 1,550 



Rhenish Prussia and Saarbrtick. .... 1,550 



Belgium, ........ 775 



Bohemia, . V> 620 



Westphalia, 590 



Spain (in the Asturias) 310 



Russia, .... . .160 



Saxony, 66 



New Zealand, Polynesia, and East Indian Islands, Unknown. 



These considerations have led us to digress from 

 our more immediate subject of the landscapes of the 

 Carboniferous period, though indirectly connected with 

 it, and, in fact, of essential service in illustrating their 

 general characters. 



In the accompanying illustration some of the more 

 remarkable species of animal life which inhabited the 

 warm carboniferous ocean are represented. On the 

 right a tribe of polypi sparkle with reflections of silvery 

 lustre, the species nearest the margin being the Las- 

 mocyathus, the Chcttetes. and the Phytopora. The 

 mollusc which occupies the extremity of the elongated 

 conical tube, resembling the sheath of a Turkish sabre, 

 is an Aploceras. It seems to be the rudimentary 

 form of an ammonite : coil this elongated shell around 

 itself, like a coil of bell- wire, and you would have at 

 once before you the ammonite or the Nautilus. Nearly 

 in the centre, reposing on the ocean-bed, are a Belle- 

 rophon hiulcus, a Nautilus Koninckii, and a Productus, 

 the latter easily recognized by the numerous spines 

 which surround its shell. 



Other polypi are spreading out their greedy tentacles 

 on the left. The Chonetes rise to the surface, furnished 

 with small spines. You may distinguish the Cyatho- 

 phyllum by their straight cylindrical stems ; and some 

 encrinites, or stone-lilies, winding round the trunk of a 

 tree, or reposing their flexible stems upon the water. 

 Among all this varied and characteristic life, immov- 

 ably attached, for the most part, to the rocks on which 

 it has first budded, move various fishes of the AnMyp- 

 terus genus. 



The teeming waters ripple on the low shores of 

 many a pleasant island, most of them covered only 

 with a dwarf rank vegetation, but others with vast 

 'orests of fern-trees and cycads, stigmaria and sigillaria, 

 deficient in bud and bloom, but richly adorned with 

 .ight, symmetrical, feathery fronds. " The trunks of a 

 modern forest are rough and gnarled ; those of the 

 Carboniferous period sprung up like the sculptured 

 shafts of a mediaeval temple, graceful in proportion, 

 and rich in ornament through the endless repetition of 

 lutings, spirals, zigzags, lozenges, ovals, and other 

 geometrical designs these designs being the persistent 

 eaf-scars of a vegetation simpler in structure and more 

 )rimitive in plau." 



b 



