240 



Gnomes ! you hen taught intruding dews to pass 

 Through time-fall'n woods, and root in wove morass, 

 Age after age ; and with filtration fine 

 Dispart, from earths and sulphurs, the saline. 



BOTANIC GARDEN, Canto II. 1. 115. 



" In other circumstances/' the Doctor adds, " probably where less 

 moisture has prevailed, morasses seem to have undergone a fer- 

 mentation, as other vegetable matter ; new hay is liable to do so, 

 from the great quantity of sugar it contains. From the great heat 

 thus produced in the lower parts of immense beds of morass, the 

 phlogistic part, or oil, or asphaltum, becomes distilled, and rising 

 into higher strata becomes again condensed, forming coal-beds of 

 greater or less purity, according to their greater or less quantity of 

 inflammable matter; at the same time the clay beds become purer 

 or less so, as the phlogistic part is more or less completely exhaled 

 from them *" 



Mr. Kirwan differs entirely from every one of these opinions ; 

 and derives the origin of coal from the disintegration, and decom- 

 position, of primaeval mountains, containing a large proportion of 

 carbonaceous and bituminous matters But it is proper that this 

 novel and interesting suggestion should not be deprived of the 

 advantages it must derive, from being given in^ Mr. Kirwan's own 

 words. 



" My opinion/' Mr. Kirwan says, " is, that coal-mines, or strata 

 of coal, as well as the mountains or hills in which they are found, 

 owe their origin to the disintegration, and decomposition, of pri- 

 maeval mountains, either now totally destroyed, or whose height and 

 bulk, in consequence of such disintegration, are now considerably 

 lessened. And that these rocks, anciently destroyed, contained, 



. * Additional Notes to Botanic Garden, note xvii. 



