Correspondence — Rusticus expectans. 89 



I scarcely hesitate to disbelieve in a new theory, and to discredit an 

 asserted discovery, unless the former holds good through several 

 editions of a manual, and the latter survives the discordant state- 

 ments of opposite parties for the term of at least three sessions, 

 exclusive of the British Association Meeting when it was first pro- 

 mulgated. I shall not, however, have time to believe in any of the 

 advanced facts and notions of to-day if these rules of mine remain 

 unbroken. Will you be pleased, Mr. Editor, to serve as strainer to 

 my curds and whey, and tell me what is the cheese, when I shall 

 have put the collected matter of my reading before you ? 



Now you must know that I like to read about coal, as well as 

 burn it this cold season ; and I have read very many curious things 

 about it. Of course, when I was a boy, coal, I was told, was the 

 accumulated vegetable refuse of the Mosaic deluge, whilst the fossils 

 of the Lias country, which constituted my world at that time, were 

 the defunct Mosaic sea animals. Once I heard a lecture on the 

 origin of coal from pitch-lakes ; but whether they were such as 

 those of Trinidad, described by G. P. Wall, or rather like those 

 elsewhere, so well described by A. Dante, J. Milton, and others, 

 I had my doubts. Then I read that coal was the drift timber 

 of pre-historic Mississippis and Orinocos. Then I was informed 

 it was the successive jungles of unknown trees on sinking is- 

 lands in the former world. Then I learned from Goeppert and 

 others that these trees and herbs could be satisfactorily separated 

 and recognized, even in the coal itself, as well as in the clay -beds 

 among which it lies ; and linger drew Martinesque forests of Sigil- 

 larias, Stigmarias, etc., and I presumed all was known. Then 

 Quekett and other histological microscopists (you see I know some 

 hard words) showed the structure of various coals ; and their long and 

 short, shaped and shapeless, coloured and discoloured, particles were 

 very interesting ; but I could not satisfy myself which way the slices 

 were cut for the microscope, nor which was the top and which the 

 bottom of the piece of coal. Then Dr. Dawson taught me more 

 clearly about the order of the bright and the dull black layers, and 

 explained everything so nicely that I thought we knew the history 

 of the coal, its forests, and all its antecedents. Others had taught 

 me of the spore-made " trubs," of the chemical changes of the 

 hydro-carbons of woody matter, peat, lignite, coal, etc. ; and I recog- 

 nized the difference between the native charcoal, or black touchwood, 

 of the streaky coal, and the anthracite, or coal changed into carbon 

 by loss of its hydrogen, and so on. But, Mr. Editor, now begins 

 my trouble. I have just read Mr. Dawkins's " Science Lecture on 

 Coal " (8vo. pamphlet ; Heywood, Manchester), and I find that 

 " bituminous coal " is so called, not because it is mostly convertible 

 into bitumen by heat, but because it contains bitumen; and I learn 

 that all this " bitumen " is nothing but sporangia and spores ! And 

 that to prove this, none have laboured so successfully as " Professor 

 Morris, Mr. Carruthers, and last, though not least. Professor Hux- 

 ley" ! Of course, I have heard of these spores and spore-cases 

 before; but this seems to me to be a case of sporimania on the 



