RESURRECTION OF THE CONTINENT. 237 



history of our beds of peat and marl. These neglected 

 swamps demand a better appreciation. Improved machin- 

 ery is already offering us peat for heat-production. There 

 was a time when the richest coal-bed was but a bottomless 

 peat-bog. The coal-measures of the country are nothing 

 but fossilized " swamp-lands." Nature has shown an inter- 

 est in peat. Let us see how she prepares it in modern 

 times. 



I have already called to mind the grand events which 

 accompanied the last great revolution of the globe. We 

 have seen, in imagination, the world emerging in a resur- 

 rection from its grave of waters. The waves have glided 

 down the shoulders and sides of the continent until she sat 

 with her feet only bathing in the sea. But the surface of 

 the land was covered with inequalities, and thousands of 

 little depressions held their lakelets of water prisoners in 

 their arms. So the land was at first dotted with thousands 

 of little inland seas. How some of them, with no outlet, 

 held fast to the saltness which was the last bequest of 

 their mother ocean, I have already explained. How oth- 

 ers, like spendthrifts, permitted a perpetual outgo, with no 

 income to correspond, I have also reminded the reader. 

 At what particular stage of dilution Nature ceased to 

 regard them as fitting abodes of the marine animals which 

 must have been entrapped within their borders I am un- 

 able to say. By what means they became tenanted by 

 the beings which make their home in fresh waters I am un- 

 able to say from the observed operation of natural laws. I 

 have no doubt that Nature promptly produced, ab origine, 

 such creatures as would be suited to the new circum- 

 stances. 



But the history of multitudes of the smaller and shal- 

 lower lakes has been completely closed. For ages they re- 

 ceived and swallowed up the teachings of the surrounding 



