I9I3.] STEVENSON— FORMATION OF COAL BEDS. 91 



He rejected the use of prepared sections and resorted to the chem- 

 ical treatment employed by Goeppert. The coal was broken up and 

 the vegetable tissues were separated so as to exhibit their character- 

 istics. He selected for study only specimens which in each case con- 

 sisted of a single plant, so that he was enabled not only to ascertain 

 the structural features of many forms but also to determine in great 

 measure the share which each type of tissue had in making the coal. 

 Reinsch, in 1881, utilizing prepared sections, elaborated Hutton's 

 work and discovered great numbers of what he took to be very 

 humble forms of vegetation. 



Grand'Eury^^ laid emphasis on the vast proportion of amorphous 

 material, the vegetable jelly, which holds the still recognizable plant 

 remains. Clearly, much of the vegetable material was transformed 

 into a kind of pulp, which forms a large part of the coal. "The 

 great number of organs preserved in the form of teguments gives 

 an idea of the quantity of vegetable jelly, which one finds to have 

 formed the coal, in proportion to the epidermis material which is 

 contained there." This jelly was not always so fluid or so homo- 

 geneous as to destroy all traces of vegetation for those are still recog- 

 nizable. In the following year, von GiimbeP^ published the results 

 of his elaborate studies of the fossil fuels from peat to anthracite. 

 Throughout the whole series he recognized the amorphous material, 

 Carbohumin, clearly the vegetable jelly of Grand'Eury, the pulp of 

 H. D. Rogers. He employed chemical processes to disintegrate the 

 coals and to lay bare the vegetable structures, remaining in the en- 

 closed fragments. He was enabled to show that while the glance 

 coal consists of different kinds of vegetable matters, the predominat- 

 ing substance is the parenchymatous cells of the rind, along with 

 tissue like wood, parts of leaves, epidermis flakes, separated disks 

 and spore-like bodies, the whole enclosed in amorphous material. 

 It is probable that the plant remains have been converted so thor- 

 oughly into homogeneous coal that determination of any vegetable 



"^ C. Grand'Eury, " Memoire sur la transformation de la houille," Ann. des 

 Mines, VIII., Vol. I., 1882, p. 109. 



^ C. W. von Giimbel, " Beitrage zur Kenntniss dur Texturverhaltnisse der 

 Mineralkohlen," 1883. 



