PAL.330NTOLOGICAL KEPOB.T OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 500 



the agency of floating mosses, spreads on such lakes, is sometimes so 

 thin that it breaks under a light pressure, and men and animals are 

 frequently engulfed and irretrievably lost in their treacherous waters. 

 The rich cabinets of Lund and Copenhagen are filled with antiquities 

 collected in the peat-bogs of that country — weapons and armor; 

 ornaments of copper, silver and gold; tools and instruments of every 

 description; bones and skulls of extinct or living races of animals; of 

 men also; even the whole skeleton of a woman, with her clothes, have 

 been found imbedded in the peat. 



Drummond's lake has now been open for many hundred years; its 

 black water has entombed its sunken forest under a bed of mud. The 

 surface of the lake, like the general surface of the Dismal swamp, is 

 only 161- feet above mid-tide of the Atlantic. If we suppose a slow 

 depression of all the space covered by the Alligator and Dismal swamps, 

 of say only a few feet in a hundred years, what would be the result? 

 At first the water rises above its former level, since its outlets are ne- 

 cessarily obstructed, and the remains of the plants still growing here 

 and there upon the hillocks of the marsh, fall every year into the wa- 

 ter and sink to the bottom — not to add any more matter to the bed of 

 the peat, but to be incorporated with the soft mud continually deposi- 

 ted by the water. If the downward movement continues, every trace 

 of vegetation must disappear, and the marsh forms an extensive lake, 

 connected by some outlet with the sea, which brings to it a few species 

 of its inhabitants, either fishes or molluscs; and, by and by, after a 

 still lower depression, either the sea spreads quietly over the whole 

 space, and its water covers it with a deposit of limestone, wherein are 

 imbedded the remains Of the shells and animals of the deep; or, per- 

 haps, after a sudden cataclysm, there is a depression of a few feet, and 

 the sea, overcoming its barriers, rushes into its old level, sweeps over 

 its old bed with impetuosity, and brings with its waves the banks of 

 sand and the gravel of its shores, to scatter them more or less irregularly 

 over the whole surface. Let the land rise and the water recede again, 

 and the formation may be repeated many times, with many modifica- 

 tions. This simple work of nature, operating in this wise for an im- 

 mense number of ceuturies, will necessarily result in the transforma- 

 tion of the whole stratum to true CoaL Measures. The compressed 

 and crystallized peat will be the coal; the soft mud slowly deposited 



