﻿80 Renews — Heer's Primaeval World of Switzerland. 



Prof. Heer describes and figures VLidxiy of those beautiful Carboni- 

 ferous plant-remains coated as it were with silver or gold, met with 

 in the Valais and higher up in the Col de Balme. These plants have 

 also been found at the Col d'Anterne above Charaouni, and were 

 examined in 1856, by Mr. Alfred Wills, whose collection is pre- 

 served in the British Museum. One remarkable feature to be seen 

 at the village of Petit Coeur, near Moutiers in the Tarentaise (due to 

 the inversion of the Carboniferous strata), was noticed by Elie de 

 Beaumont in the ' Annales des Sciences Naturelles ' so long ago as 

 1828.^ Here we find Belemnites in Secondary rocks beneath shales 

 of undoubted Carboniferous age.^ 



From the foi-mation of Coal, Prof, Heer proceeds to speak of that 

 most nearly analogous accumulation of vegetable fuel — Peat, which 

 we may observe going on at the present day over such extensive 

 tracts in the colder temperate regions of the earth, and from which, 

 in Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland, and some parts of England also, 

 such interesting relics of prehistoric man have been obtained. 



Unfortunately for Switzerland, her industrious and patriotic people 

 enjoy but a very small share of that valuable Coal-formation so widely 

 distributed through England, Belgium, and the United States. Con- 

 sequently peat and wood fuel are carefully collected and stored, and 

 for coal its industries depend upon the basins of Saarbruck and St.- 

 Etienne and a smaller quantity from the Vosges (Bonchamp), and from 

 the Euhr district in Westphalia, The rate of growth of peat is no doubt 

 subject to considerable climatal variations, being readily influenced 

 both by the temperature and moisture of the atmosphere. Prof. 

 Heer says that — " Under moderately favourable circumstances, 1 foot 

 of peat may be produced in a century. In the form of coal this 

 would make a layer of 0-33 line, or about ^rd of a line. To produce 

 a bed of coal 44 feet in thickness, such as occurs in England, a 

 period of nearly 20,000 years would therefore be necessary. If we 

 take the increase at 3 lines annually, 10,000 years would be required, 

 or with 4 times the increase, only 5,000 years." 



Even under the most favourable conditions for rapid increase, 

 however, the period of time involved in the annual growth, decay 

 and accumulation of vegetation and its conversion into coal, must 

 necessarily have been immense. In South Wales, for instance, the 

 total thickness of the Coal-measures has been reckoned at from 

 10,000 to 12,000 feet. Estimating the increase of sediment at 2 feet 

 in a century, and admitting, with Mr. C Maclaren, that it might take 

 1000 years to form a bed of coal 1 yard in thickness, Prof. Hull has 

 calculated that the deposits forming the South Wales Coal-field 

 might have been accumulated in 640,000 years ! ^ 



1 See also Sii- C. F. Buiibury's paper on Fossil Plants from the Anthracite 

 Formation of the Alps of Savoy, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond., 1849, vol. v. 

 p. 130. 



~ See Prof. Favre's Geological Researches in the Vicinity of Mont Blauc in Savoy, 

 Piedmont, and Switzerland, vol. iii. p. 337, etc. 



3 See " The Geology of England and Wales," by Horace B. Woodward, F.G.S., 

 1876, p. 93. 



