OF CREATION. 



79 



been almost entirely succulent, and capable of being 

 squeezed into a small compass during partial decom- 

 position. This squeezing process must have been con- 

 ducted on a grand scale, both during and after the 

 formation of separate beds, and each bed in succession 

 was probably soon covered up by muddy and sandy 

 accumulations, now alternating with the coal in the 

 form of shale and grit-stone. Sometimes trunks of 

 trees caught in the mud would be retained in a slant- 

 ing or nearly vertical position, while the sands were 

 accumulating round them ; sometimes the whole would 

 be quietly buried, and soon cease to exhibit any exter- 

 nal marks of vegetable origin.* 



To relate at full length the different processes, 

 and the gradual superposition of one bed upon an- 

 other, by which at length, and by slow degrees, the 

 whole group of the coal-measures was completed, 

 would involve far too much complication of detail to be 

 described in a few pages ; and when it is remembered 

 that the woody fibre, when deposited, had to be after- 

 wards completely changed, and the whole character of 

 the vegetable modified, before it could be reduced to 

 the bituminous, brittle, almost crystalline mineral now 

 dug out of the earth for fuel, it will rather seem ques- 

 tionable whether the origin of coal was certainly and 

 necessarily vegetable, than reasonable to doubt the 

 importance of the change that has taken place, and 



* There can be no reasonable doubt, judging from the analogy of exist- 

 ing vegetation, that some beds of coal may have been derived from the 

 mass of vegetable matter present at one time on the surface and submerged 

 suddenly. It is only necessary to refer to the accounts of vegetation in 

 some of the extremely moist warm islands in the southern hemisphere, 

 where the ground is occasionally covered with eight or ten feet of de- 

 caying vegetable matter at one time, to be satisfied that this is at least 

 possible. 



