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, 
^yiio 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 regularity 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 hfe 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-hke plants, and bits of diapered or fluted cylinders highly 
ornamented ; with occasional fir-cones, or what look hke 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 
crj^stalline 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 
zn, 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 NEW EACTS IN RELATION TO THE SECTION 
OF THE CLIFF AT MUNDESLEY, NORFOLK.* 
By Joseph Peestwich, F.R.S., F.G.S. 
In 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 undomeath, and, on the other, to the series of 
t ^tS^^^^^r ^^"^ ^^eeting of the British Association at Oxford, in June, 1860, 
and published by permission of the Author. 
