ON THE FOSSIL TREES IN A MARL PIT AT HANLEY. 85 



The enormous aggregate depth of the whole of the coal- 

 bearing strata in this coalfield, taken together with the 

 thickness of many of the beds, clearly proves that a long 

 period of time must have been required for its formation. 

 A recent writer of some note has asserted that it is im- 

 possible to suppose that our coal measures accumulated 

 more than one-tenth of an inch in a year. If this is true, 

 what a prodigious amount of time would be required for 

 the deposition of the eighty feet of strata in the marl pit ! 

 But if for the formation of this thin slice of our coalfield 

 such an amount of time was required, what, I ask, would 

 be required for the deposition of 6,000 feet ? Who amongst 

 us can tell ? It can only be known to Him to whom a 

 day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. 



The soft internal structure of the interior of these trees 

 appears to have decayed away, and the trees to have be- 

 come, as I have said, partially immersed. The tops and 

 branches would be exposed to the storms of that period, 

 and fall away. The sediment would all the time be de- 

 positing around them and so cover them up. By the action 

 of the gases the bark of the trees would become carbonized, 

 and the thin shell of coal we saw on them would be 

 formed. The interior of the trees would now become filled 

 with the sediment, and the ferns, calamites, and other 

 exuvias of the carboniferous period would be drifted into 

 them and covered by the sediment. Frequently small 

 reptiles crept into the interiors and were thus entombed. 

 Dr. Dawson has found a number of these creatures in the 

 interiors of the erect sigillaria in Nova Scotia, and several 

 species of land shells. 



Some doubt appears to exist as to what kind of a fruit 

 belonged to sigillaria. It is generally thought that the 



