150 WALKS AND TALKS. 



that the coal is of vegetable origin, and much of it from tree- 

 like vegetation. With other observations we detect, many 

 times, innumerable spores scattered through the coal. These 

 are cells produced by vegetation which is flowerless. They 

 answer for the fruit, but are not fruit, as the term is usually 

 employed. The coal vegetation, therefore, was without flow- 

 ers or fruits. Much of it, as we readily discover, was of the 

 nature of ferns some of them tree-ferns, such as grow in our 

 times, in some tropical regions. If we were to search further 

 we should find traces of vegetation resembling our Horsetails 

 and Ground Pines. So we may regard ourselves quite justi- 

 fied in concluding that the coal which blazes and cheers on 

 the grate, was once in the condition of a flowerless tree, rooted 

 in an ancient soil, spreading its green fronds to the sunlight, 

 decomposing the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, fixing the 

 carbon in its own tissues, and setting oxygen free. 



So, the sun was shining in the heavens so long a time ago. 

 The plans of vegetable structure were in existence, and the 

 forces of vegetable growth. How long have those plans en- 

 dured ! How imperishable are the thoughts embodied in those 

 plans, and expressed by them ! The tree stood upright in the 

 soil ; it drank in water by its roots, and bathed its foliage in 

 the primeval air. It built its stem and fronds with fibers and 

 cells like the modern fern. The sun stimulated it into action. 

 The sun's warmth imparted strength to discharge its functions. 

 The sun's emanations of light and heat became transformed 

 into stem and frond and tissue. Whatever vicissitudes that 

 growth may since have undergone, the same eliminated carbon 

 is there ; much of the same tissue form is there; it is the same 

 transformed sunlight that it was millions of years ago. It is 

 ancient' sunlight that has been locked up like a treasure and 

 buried in the earth for ages. Here, in this flame, the tissue- 

 substance goes back to its primeval condition it becomes 

 again carbonic acid, and mingles again in the atmosphere from 

 which it was selected. Here, in this flame, the old warmth 

 reappears; it is the warmth of the sun which shone in the 

 Carboniferous Age. Here, in this flame, the old sunlight is 



