ON THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE. 423 



which we are entitled to draw the conclusion, that they 

 must have been deposited in inclosed basins of inland 

 waters. 



From the beds of coal found in various situations 

 among Alpine limestone, as well as in other secondary 

 formations, under similar circumstances, we are at liber- 

 ty to maintain that they are not indebted for their origin 

 to any universal and sudden revolution. 



When we proceed to the second division of coal for- 

 mations, to brown coal, or to lignite, the principal diffe- 

 rence we discover is, that the change which the vegeta- 

 bles have undergone, having taken place at a time when 

 the chemical power had lost much of its energy, was in- 

 complete ; and besides, we observe in the different 

 brown coal formations the same repetition of single beds 

 alternating with other beds of rocks, the mixture of 

 different minerals, and not unfrequently of upright 

 stems. Some appear to be derived from sea plants, and 

 others from fresh-water plants ; but the greater pro- 

 portion from land plants. They, equally with the beds 

 of black coal, give evidence of a new overflow of water, 

 and the water plants themselves, which never thrive at a 

 great depth, and which frequently appear under prodi- 

 gious beds of rocks, must have experienced such a 

 change. But that change was scarcely of the kind which 

 we understand by a deluge, and the frequent repeti- 

 tion of deluges indicated, according to some, by the re- 

 peated beds of coal from the transition to the newest ter- 

 tiary periods, is hardly credible. It may be maintained, 

 with more certainty, of brown coal than of black coal, 

 that they have been formed in land water, and hence in 



