68 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



his safety, often ventures on his work with a naked candle, instead 

 of the useful instrument which Davy and Stephenson had given him. 



I need not speak of this " wonderful lamp," which lights to 

 treasures as valuable and far more durable than those Aladdin found. 

 Who would have thought, when Davy was pondering on the fact, 

 that flame did not pass readily through narrow tubes — and trying 

 shorter and shorter lengths of these in philosophic sport— that he was 

 really making a discovery which has saved the lives of thousands. 



The government inspection, now regularily carried on, will do 

 much to encourage those that do, and shame those managers that do 

 not conform to the regulations laid down for their benefit. But more, 

 a great deal more is be looked for from the education of the miners 

 and their children. They have friends for the body, and for the mind 

 too ; and a life spent underground cannot kill out the intelligence 

 and virtue of a man who is determined to hold it fast. 



And now we have done with coal for the present, let us try and 

 find out how it was formed. 



It is perfectly understood that it is made up of plants. We need not 

 enter again into that proof: coal is full of them. You cannot stand 

 five minutes by the side of a shaft, and look at the heaps of dark 

 blue shale brought out of it, without finding them full of fern-leaves, 

 and grass-like plants, and bits of diapered or fluted cylinders highly 

 ornamented ; with occasional fir-cones, or what look like them, and 

 a heap of other fragments. The coal itself bears witness to the 

 quantity of plants in and about it. It is generally too solid — too 

 crystalline so to speak — to show its structure well. But here and there 

 the charcoal fragments in it are covered with vegetable tissue, and 

 the microscope reveals still further traces. Of these I will say a little 

 more in our next number, for my space and time too are somewhat 

 limited at present ; and with the fact that plants in myriads are found 

 in the coal, above the coal, and under the coal, I must request my 

 young readers to be contented till next month. 



(To be Continued.) 



ON" SOME NTEW FACTS IN RELATION TO THE SECTION 

 OF THE CLIFF AT MUNDESLEY, NORFOLK * 



By Joseph Prestwich, F.R.S., F.G.S. 



I.\ the fine coast section extending from Happisburg to Weyboume, 

 the Boulder clay is laid open to an extent nowhere else equalled in 

 England. The relation of this Boulder clay, on the one side, to the 

 Forest bed and Crag underneath, and, on the other, to the series of 



* Head before the Meeting of the British Association at Oxford, in June, 1S60, 

 and published by permission of the Author. 



