SALTEE — A CHRISTMAS LECTURE ON COAL, 
181 
For with, these shells, and attached to the plants, that lie among, 
and above, and beneath the shell-beds, is found abundantly a little 
sea-worm, or rather the spiral case of a sea-worm 
0, ^ {Spirorhis, fig. 4), which is as well knoAvn now 
upon sea-wrack and kelp, as it was upon floating 
^^^earbonarim^^^ Icavcs and plant-stcms in the coal-period. It is 
called 8p. carhonarius from its habitation in the coal. 
And there were sea-crabs — not, it is true, like English ones — but 
like the king-crab {lAmulus) of American waters. And shrimps 
though rare, were not quite absent. And sharks swam in the water ; 
for we find their teeth and fin-bones. And other strange uncouth 
fish, more like the bony pike of America than aught else. This is a 
freshwater fish, and tells rather against my opinion ; but all I can 
say is, that if the coal-fishes were not saltwater'fishes, they had no 
business among saltwater shells and Crustacea, and they must take 
the consequences. 
But how reconcile saltwater and its inhabitants with lofty trees, 
and a thick jungle, and delicate ferns ; and colonies of insects, and 
spiders, and scorpions, and lizards ? 
No doubt this is a difficulty. Most authors who have written on 
the coal have taken it for granted that it must have been formed in 
mighty swamps at the mouths of rivers, with only frequent access of 
the sea ; with much dry land in the neighbourhood to supply the 
ferns and firwood, and permit the growth of a thick underwood such 
as certainly must have formed the coal. 
But others, and amongst these I must name Prof, Henry Rogers 
of America, and our own Mr. Binney chief*, have not shrunk from 
the supposition that the Sigillaria grew on the sea-bed itself. 
" Only one particular process," says Prof. Rogers, " promises to 
explain the occurrence of these thin and uniform sheets of material, 
of which the thickness is often less than a foot, while their super- 
ficial area is many hundred square miles. I cannot conceive any 
state of the surface but that in which the margin of the sea was 
occupied by vast marine savannahs of some peat-forming plant, grow- 
ing half-immersed on a horizontal plane, fringed and interspersed 
with forests of trees, shedding their leaves upon the marsh. 
Such are the only circumstances under which I can imagine these 
regularly parallel, thin, widely-extended sheets of carbonaceous 
matter could have been accumulated." 
The smooth surface of the underclay formed a fit nidus for the 
young plants, and as the deposit went on, they struck their roots far 
and wide into it, and grew to their full stature. These trees formed 
the bulk of the coal-forest. The interstices were filled with the 
reedy plants, Asterophyllites, Calamites, and sedges, with many a 
Lepidodendron and coniferous tree ; and as the decaying leaves and 
* Trans, of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, 1842, p. 433. 
Binney, Manch. Geol. Trans, vol. i., p. 172, 1840. 
