504 PAL&ONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



accidents which have accompanied the formation of the coal. And 

 since it is, from the nature of the shales of the coal-beds, and from the 

 remains, whether plants or animals, found in connection with them, that 

 the writer of this report intends taking the characters that may help to 

 their identification, or to the ascertaining of their geological level, it 

 is necessary to give, at least, the details that may he justly required, 

 as reliable proofs of the validity of his opinion. 



The vegetable is cotemporary with the animal kingdom. Plants 

 and animals have appeared at the same time on the earth, and grown to- 

 gether in parallel lines — for the remains of marine plants or fucoides 

 are found in the oldest stratified rocks, in connection with the petrified 

 remains of shells. As soon as a part of the earth's surface has been 

 thrown out of the sea, like a new-born child, nature, its kind mother, 

 has covered it with the green carpet of another vegetation. But the 

 rise of a solid surface above the sea does not appear to have been a sud- 

 den and paroxismal event. Impelled by the action of an internal fire, 

 the crust of the earth, still thin and scarcely solid, was continually 

 swelling here and there, with a variety of undulating movements — 

 ascending and then subsiding at the same place — either propelled by 

 the internal fire, or depressed by its own weight, when the force lost its 

 energy. In this manner, ranges of hills began to appear, breaking 

 the monotonous horizon of an universal ocean; and at their base, im- 

 mense plains, leveled by the long protracted action of the waves, being 

 by and by raised to the surface and separated from the sea by heavy 

 banks of sand, were thus transformed into shallow marshes, prepared 

 for another kind of vegetation. Such marshes though, of a far more lim- 

 ited extent, are seen in our time along the shores, both of the Atlan- 

 tic and of our great lakes, the Dismal and Alligator swamps of the 

 south; the Sandusky, Montezuma, and Toledo marshes of the north. 

 But before those immense plains were thus slowly elevated and sep- 

 arated from the vast deep, the sea came for a long time, breaking its 

 waves against the primitive hills, or at least, was long engaged in de- 

 positing around their base the mud with which its waters were charged. 

 Those gigantic deposits of red sandstone, bordering the coal basin on 

 its eastern margins, are especially the work of the tides. Like the 

 conglomerates which were afterwards deposited upon them, they thick- 

 en to the east, and nearly disappear in the cqntrvy vi r ? f,+ ion ? evidently 



