258 Observations on M. Beudant^s 



the anthracite in the transition class without a possibility of 

 doubt, as the same uniformity of arrangement fixes the nat- 

 ural position of a great many individual rocks, that remain 

 doubtful from the deranged state of the stratification in Eu- 

 rope. 



To be capable of applying the nomenclature of any sci- 

 ence to the substances, on seeing them, constitutes the 

 most laborious part of a scientific instruction. Nothing ren- 

 ders the learning of a science more difficult and complicated 

 than a great number of names for the same substance. M. 

 Beudant, following the practice of most French authors, 

 translates all the names of rocks into French, thereby add- 

 ing immensely to the difficulty of understanding him, and 

 placing new obstructions to the learning of geology, which 

 ought to be the most simple and easy of ail the sciences, 

 while at the same time it is perhaps the most useful. 



There is considerable confusion in M. Beudant's secon- 

 dary rocks. He reverses the order of Werner, as well as 

 what I found to be the order of nature, by placing the Gres 

 houillier, (which the English collier calls coal measures,) 

 as the oldest secondary, putting over it the oldest red sand- 

 stone, and covering it with the compact limestone. When 

 1 first began my geological rambles (considering coal as 

 the most useful and valuable substance that nature had be- 

 stowed on man) I followed it through all my excursions, 

 and visited every considerable coal field in Europe, with 

 the hope that by an exact examination of all the strata, over 

 and under it, I should be able to predict where coal 

 could be found, but was at last forced to content myself 

 with a tolerable guess, at where it most probably could not 

 be found. The three species of secondary rocks, under 

 which I never found it, in any quantity worth the work- 

 ing, were chalk, compact limestone, and the oldest red sand 

 stone. Four fifths of all the coal beds in Europe or the 

 United States repose on limestone, and crop out to day in 

 the flanks of secondary shell limestone hills, compact in its 

 structure, and often not of the oldest formation. In this 

 position 1 found almost all the coal beds in England, Wales, 

 and Scotland, all the coal around the Hartz mountains in 

 Germany, all the coal in Silesia ; even the extensive coal 

 field in Flanders, and the north of France, lies in secondary 

 limestone, although the quantity of mica in the coal meas- 



