on the Manchester and Bolton Railway. 179 



dissipated in volatile gases that which just before had presented a solid form. 

 The great heat and excessive moisture of these forests appear well calculated to 

 hasten such processes ; and in a manner which persons who have always lived in 

 more northern climes can scarcely conceive of; — whether these processes ori- 

 ginate in chemical action, or in the growth of fungi, or in both combined. 



Cases of this kind were met with most frequently in the low and flat lands, which 

 are equally adapted to the growth of the tallest forest trees and the most majestic 

 palms, and where, from the deep wet soil and excessive moisture, all the subor- 

 dinate vegetation consisted of canes, bamboos, and minor palms. Such tracts 

 would be most easily submerged, and are most analogous in character to our coal- 

 basins. The filling-up or undergrowth of these districts being soft and green, 

 it would be less likely to leave permanent traces of its existence behind. The 

 palms would form but a small proportion of the whole, and a large number of the 

 forest trees rendered tender and friable by rapid decay would be dissipated and 

 lost in the surrounding nucleus, leaving little more than specks of carbonaceous 

 matter, to tell of their former existence. Supposing the vegetable covering of 

 the spot on which the forests grew, was thick enough to form that which to fu- 

 ture ages would be a seam of coal, the decayed trees would be incorporated and 

 mixed up with the mass of vegetable matter, mingling like the dust of former 

 generations with their kindred dust around. These observations may perhaps 

 somewhat elucidate why so few distinct fossil remains of a large size are found in 

 our coal-measures, and the absence of which has not unfrequently struck me as 

 peculiar, considering the myriads of forest trees which must have constituted part 

 of the vegetable kingdom at the time of the formation of our coal-deposits. The 

 fossil trunks of trees are comparatively rare. Calamites, if they resembled the 

 canes or reeds of tropical forests, from their harder texture, might be expected to 

 have more frequently left the traces of their forms behind ; but if they belonged, 

 as seems likely, to another class of plants of a softer structure, the question again 

 arises, why are they more numerous than the fossil remains of trees ? Giving full 

 force to what I have stated as to the rapid decay of many forest trees in tropical 

 climates, it may yet be remarked, if coal is to be looked upon as the debris of a 

 forest, we ought to find more numerous traces of trunks of trees in our coal-basins. 

 The difficulty is a great one, and it is only perhaps by allowing the original of our 

 coal-seams to have been a combination of vegetable matter analogous to peat, that 

 the difficulty can be solved. Few trees would grow in these situations ; and we 

 might expect to find them, as we do find them, few in number, and isolated in posi- 

 tion. The Flora of our coal-formations would then be representatives of almost 

 naked mosses ; and the remains of vegetable forms we most frequently find would 

 only, as has been already advanced by Professor Lindley, be confirmative of the 



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