- 86 L, Lesquereux on the Coal Formations of North America. 
the top of the stems, or above water, these stems can not help 
much in the process of purifying the muddy water. Yet it is 
true that it becomes clear towards the interior of the marshes, 
but only as fast as the current becomes insensible or the water 
which he can scarcely be held phy or at least for the 
assertion of the celebrated English author, an assertion that I do 
not recollect to have read in any of Lyell’s works and which 
would truly show too much of ignorance of the paleontology 
and even of the strata of the coal measures. It is this: “In the 
sandstone of the coal formations, it is customary to find trunks 
_ of trees, but only trees, no small branches, leaves or tender parts. 
And these trunks are observed to be mostly pines, highland trees, 
ber Sretght by the river from the high lands. tie if the sea 
could not and did not float timber as well as a riv 
But it is not with the conclusion that we have a deal now, 
but with the assertion, erroneous in every poi 
1. The trunks of trees are by far more sonal found in the 
sandstone of the coal than the small fragments of leaves, branches, 
Some strata of sandstone, the Mahoning sandstone and oth- 
ers of the low coal measures, are sometimes entirely blackened 
by those small fragments of plants so bruised that it is scarcely 
bur iti to identify any species. This is not a local appearance; 
ut itis observable in the whole extent of the coal-fields gene- 
rally on the same stratum of sandstone. This shows a rapid 
fosratven of the sea, which sweeping with impetuosity upon the 
peat bogs of the coal, washed away part of ee am ecomposed plants 
and peat bogs and mixed them with the sa 
2. Representative species of the Pine gad have scarcely 
been found in the true coal measures. In the family of the Cu- 
pressinee which ne more than sixty species of fossil plants dis- 
tributed in twenty genera, there is not a single spécies belonging 
to the coal epoch. In the family of the Pines which has at least 
one hundred and fifty fossil species known, distributed in twelve — 
genera, there are only thirteen species which have been referr 
to the true coal measures. Two of these, Peuce Hugeliana Ung. 
and Peuce australis Ung., belong to uncertain formations of coal 
of Van anes and Vanguroé Islands. Of two other species, 
um Beinertianum (Endl.) pelo to ae limestone — 
ie 2 
one, 4 
as to the oe a of the transition Faye Dy th hee 
lum Sternbergii Endl. was wrongly ascri 
