14 GEOLOGICAL MEMOIRS. 



I. Fossil carbon, and its uses, were well known in ancient classical 

 times, though perhaps not the stone-coal as commonly understood. 

 This appears to have been employed in China earher than in Europe, 

 where its use does not go back beyond the year 1 000. The first works 

 were opened about the year 1198 in Belgium, soon afterwards in 

 England and Scotland, in the fifteenth century in France and Ger- 

 many ; probably first at Zwickau in Saxony, from which the use of 

 it gradually extended to the other deposits in that country. The 

 discovery of the coal-beds of other countries does not date further 

 back than towards the close of the preceding century, and some even 

 only from our own time. Almost every quarter of the globe, and 

 every zone, including the polar and the southern temperate and 

 tropical zones, are furnished with this mineral, Africa being the sole 

 exception, unless perhaps it has been discovered in Algiers, regarding 

 which I have no certain information. Coal-beds are wrought 1 725 

 feet below the sea level, and probably extend down to 20,656 feet ; 

 whilst on the other hand they rise to 12,000 feet above it, and at 

 Huanuco, in Peru, even attain an elevation of 14,700 feet. Almost 

 everywhere this formation exhibits a more or less basin-shaped form 

 of stratification ; and so far as is known, also a similar composition 

 of alternating beds of coal, sandstone, and slate-clay, the first being 

 the thinnest, amounting to from 2 to 60 or occasionally as much as 

 120 feet in thickness. 



II. So far as I have ascertained, no inquiries into the origin of the 

 coal- deposits were undertaken previous to the revival of the study of 

 nature in the sixteenth century. Yet even then, in the time of 

 Agricola, who may be considered the founder of our present mine- 

 ralogy, no one for a moment entertained any doubts of its organic 

 origin. The chief error was in attaching too much importance to 

 the earthy parts occurring along with the coal, which was then re- 

 garded as an earth saturated with bitumxinous matter, an opinion which 

 maintained its ground almost universally even down to the nineteenth 

 century. The more correct view of Scheuzer, that the whole sub- 

 stance of the former vegetation was mixed with the coal, though 

 published at the commencement of the eighteenth century, was for 

 long unheeded ; but deserves the more to be rescued from obhvion, 

 since even in our own time the most varied inquiries have on the whole 

 led to no different result. Besides, the history of the gradual develop- 

 ment of an idea, even in the field of a special science, is always in- 

 teresting, and forms a small contribution to our knowledge of the 

 progress of the human mind, and I have, therefore, not thought it 

 improper to treat of it at considerable length. Who knows in how 

 short time all our present knowledge on this subject may possess 

 nothing more than a mere historical importance ? 



III. Should we now, following the example of Boue, Adolphe 

 Brongniart, Alexander v. Humboldt, Lyell, Murchison and other 

 distinguished geologists, feel justified in assuming that after the de- 

 position of all the so-called transition rocks (the Cambrian, Silurian, 

 and Devonian formations), Europe, or indeed the greater part of the 

 earth, formed an immense sea, with a considerable number of separate 



