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much above its present level, as to cover even the summits of those 

 secondary mountains which contain the remains of tropical plants. 

 But whether we suppose these plants to have grown near the spot 

 where they are found, or to have been carried thither, from different 

 parts, by the force of an impelling flood, it is equally difficult, he 

 remarks, to conceive, how organized beings, which, in order to live, 

 require such a vast difference in temperature and in seasons, 

 could live on the same spot : or how their remains could (from cli- 

 mates so widely distant) be brought together in the same place, by 

 one common dislocating cause. To this ancient order of fossil ve- 

 getables belong whatever retains a vegetable shape, found in or 

 near coal mines, and (to judge from the places where they have 

 been found) the greater part of the agatized woods. 



The second order of fossil vegetables, comprehends those which 

 are found in the strata of clay and sand ; materials which are the re- 

 sult of slow depositions of the sea, and of rivers ; agents still at work, 

 under the present constitution of our planet. These vegetable re- 

 mains are found, in such flat countries as may be considered to be 

 of a new formation. The vegetable organization still subsists, at 

 least, in part ; and this vegetable substance has suffered a change 

 only in colour, smell, or consistence; alterations which are pror 

 duced by the developement of their oily and bituminous parts, or 

 by their natural progress towards rottenness. To this description 

 of fossil vegetables, the decayed trees, and other vegetable remains, 

 belong, which constitute the greater part of the mass of which this 

 moor is formed. Although these trees are standing in their native 

 soil, Dr. deSerra reminds us, that the level in which they are found 

 cannot be the same as that in which they grew ; and we should there- 

 fore, conclude, that the forest here, described, grew in a level high 

 enough to permit its vegetation, whiqh could not have been the 

 case if it had been so near the sea,, qr bejtow, the c ( pmmon level of 



