22 J. Lesquereux on the Coal Formations of North America. 
coal itself. It would be useless, again to show the groundless- 
ness of an Pe to which nature does not give the slightest 
apparent su 
he pe Spa that the matter of the coal (the wood) was 
heaped in some hollows or basins by the agency of water, as by 
currents of the sea or of some river, or by some other external 
cause, hurricanes, partial or general floods, sinking of the ground 
covered with thick fores ts, &c., has been also generally aban- 
doned as contradicted by general evidence. € reasons against 
it may be briefly enumerated. They are found: 1. In tbe strati- 
fication of the coal measures; and also of the coal itself, which 
beds of al containing a quantity of matter far greater than 
could be furnished by a buried for 
The theory of the formation of ne. coal by the heaping of con- 
secutive layers of plants and trees grown in place, preserved in 
water and buried afterwards; or the peat-bog theory as it is 
called by some, is then the only one admitted now as satisfacto- 
rily explaining the process of formation of the coal.. The anal- 
ogy of formation between the peat-bogs of our time and the 
beds of coal of the old measures cannot be called a theory; it is 
a demonstrable fact. We can now see the coal. growing up by 
the heaping of woody matter in the bogs. After a while we see 
it transformed into a dark combustible compound that we name 
peat or lignite according to its age. We then see it hardening 
either by compression, or by this slow burning J in tsp that has. 
ocular examination or chemical analysis fail to distinguish from 
true coal. We find besides in Holland, Denmark an = Sweden, 
thick pa pecs of peat separated into distinet beds by strata of — 
mud and sand, giving the best possible elueidation of the pro- 
cess of stratification of the coal measures 
It is not only in their general features that both formations 
are so much alike. But in the minutest accidents and even 
peculiarities, their agreement is clear and unquestionable to one 
who has studied the formations of the peat boga:s as our time. 
We quote a few sxamaples. 
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