l82 



FACTS AND FANCIES. 



its composition and microscopic structure finds 

 that it is an accumulation of vegetable matter 

 representing the action of the solar light on the 

 leaves of trees of the Palaeozoic Age. It thus 

 calls up images of these perished forests and 

 of the causes concerned in their production and- 

 growth, and in the accumulation and preserva- 

 tion of their buried remains. It further sug- 

 gests the many ways in which this solar energy, 

 so long sealed up, can be recalled to activity in 

 heat, gaslight, steam, and electric light, and how 

 remarkably these things have been related to 

 the wealth and the civilization of modern na- 

 tions. An able writer of the agnostic school, 

 in a popular lecture on coal, has his imagination 

 so stimulated by these thoughts that he apostro- 

 phizes "Nature" as the cunning contriver who 

 stored up this buried sunlight by her strange 

 and mysterious alchemy, kept it quietly to her- 

 self through all the long geological periods 

 when reptiles and brute mammals were lords 

 of creation, and through those centuries of bar- 

 barism when savage men roamed over the pro- 

 ductive coal-districts in ignorance of their treas- 

 ures, and then revealed her long-hidden stores 

 of wealth and comfort to the admiring study of 

 science and civilization, and for the benefit of 



