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SECTION I. 



REMARKS ON THE VEGETABLE REMAINS OCCURRING IN THE VARIOUS 

 STRATA FROM THE OLD RED SANDSTONE UP TO THE CHALKS, AND 

 ON THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF COAL. 



From investigations made by the most active and experienced botani- 

 cal geologists, we find reason to conclude that the first appearance of an 

 extensive vegetation occurred in the carboniferous series ; and from a recent 

 examination of the mountain-limestone groups and coal-fields of Scotland, 

 and the north of England, we learn that these early vegetable productions, 

 so far from being simple in their structure, as had been supposed, are as 

 complicated as the phanerogamic plants of the present day. This discovery 

 necessarily tends to destroy the once favourite idea, that, from the oldest to 

 the most recent strata, there has been a progressive development of vege- 

 table and animal forms, from the simplest to the most complex. 



Such investigations have been rendered easy by our now being able to 

 reduce the hardest and most opaque vegetable fossils hitherto found in these 

 repositories, to a state fitting them for microscopical inspection ; so that 

 even by means of a common lens, we can satisfactorily examine the entire 

 organization of these beautiful objects. It is a subject of congratulation to 

 think that, by a comparison of existing vegetable stems, containing woody 

 texture, with the fossil trunks, we may entertain a well-grounded hope, that 

 we shall be able to refer the latter to analogous families or genera of the 

 present vegetation of the globe. 



From what has already been done, we are led to believe that the sur- 

 faces of the earth, as they successively existed, were adorned in these re- 

 mote periods, with trees containing woody cellular tissue, differing entirely 



