W. S. Qresley—Coal Plants. 541 



noticeable : one is that the black shale or ' bone ' bed is, as it were, 

 ploughed up and overturned along the sides of the coaly intruders 

 (see Fig. 2) ; and the other is that ruptured masses of the ' bone' are 

 seen to lie upon the backs and tops of the more prominent expansions 

 (see D, Fig. 2), making it perfectly plain that these plants, in pushing 

 their way upwards, carried patches or strips of the layer B with 

 them in the water (they must have been under water) or slime in 

 which they were growing. I fail to see how one could wish for 

 a more striking demonstration of expansive or upward growth of 

 plants absolutely in place of growth than such as this figure is typical 

 of. What other explanation, I ask, will be satisfactory ? 



But if we would attempt to account for this phenomenon bj'^ 

 supposing the forms were in place before the bone layer was 

 deposited, its deposition would have been a horizontal, even, or 

 unbroken one, and the projecting (? woody) processes, such as D, 

 Fig. 2, would have stood up through or been left bare of it, as 

 suggested in Fig. 1. But we are not left to conjecture upon this 

 point. Look at the conditions or the phenomenon sketched in Fig. 3, 



c -, -^ 



B 



for clearly here we have one of these forms, D, actually arrested as 

 it were in the act of rupturing the bone layer B. That that stratum 

 was undergoing lateral stretching, amounting to tearing it asunder 

 at E and F, as well as crumpling or thrusting it aside at G, when 

 overwhelmed or when solidification took place, and that the cause of 

 the rending and twisting was the lateral thrust from the extension 

 towards Gr of the form, or coal-plant growth, D, is to my mind 

 perfectly clear, admitting of no other explanation when taken in 

 conjunction with the phenomena illustrated in Figs. 1 and 2, besides 

 other facts to be noted. 



Having these forms of coaly material interlaminated or inter- 

 stratified with the body of the coal-seam in a descending direction, 

 and inseparably connected stratigraphically and physically in the 

 opposite direction with the beds immediately overlying the coal- 

 seam, to draw a hard and fast line between the coal-bed and the 

 clay above it is impossible. The conclusion, then, is, that growth 

 in situ, for a part at least, of the seam of coal, must be granted, even 

 by those who would prefer what we call the ' drift theory.' Another 



