24 WL. Lesquereux on the Coal Formations of North America. 
trees are found all softened and already flattened to a greater or 
less extent. Some of the buried forests of England show the 
same appearance. from some clay banks exposed by a slide in — 
the Jura mountains, large trees of recent species, still living in 
the country around, have been exhumed, and though the wood 
still preserves its natural a pearance and its tissues, it has lost 
its hardness of texture ante has become as soft as the clay itself. 
Henee, as Liebig has proved by direct experiments, in the pro- 
cess of slow decomposition or rather slow combustion in water, 
the woody matter is ashen 3 softened before its hardening and 
eer transformation in co 
enmark, there are immense meadows, extending for miles 
mas the shores and covering old Peoreght of ae or = 
pest can be es eae open all its details. First a thicket of alder 
rout out, covering an overflowed surface of ground. 
The thicket 1s (Aaepenmtrable, and soon presents a confusedness 
of stems and interlaced —— Then, as the trees become 
older, the whole mass begins to decay, especially at the level of 
the water, and by and by it falls down by its own weight, be 
comes submerged i in a few years, and from its own se upon 
the mould of its half floating, half decomposed remains, a new 
generation of trees appears again and the process of forination is 
continued in the same way. “The internal woody matter of the 
trees, the lignine, is decomposed at first and reduced to a paste, 
while the bark, impregnated with resins, is preserved for an 
indefinite period. In the coal basin of Trevorton, Pa., there is 
a perpendicular wall presenting to the eye a beautiful picture ¢ of 
prints of Lepidodendra and Sigillariz, crossing each other in 
every possible direction, all thin layers of bark superposed — 
without any woody or carbonized matter between. It is nothing 
but the surface of an old coal-swamp, formed like the — —_ 
_ described above. The peat which it covered has form 
coal, and the woody matter floating in water above it has ses 
mixed with mud and formed the s 
If it is true, as we said before, that all the peat soci | 
subjected to continual and hypothetical meodGageesie which, 
art its sim Sone: a See it a truly unsustainable. — 
oe 
