g56 COAL STRATA IN EUROPE. 
formation in Ulster, Montgomery, and Sullivan 
counties, and the earlier coal-bearing strata of the 
Ohio Valley, we deem it improbable that coal will 
be found in very large quantities in this state. 
In Europe, anthracite has been discovered in al- 
most every rock, from lias, which lies above the 
new red sandstone (which latter rests immediately 
on the proper coal measures), to gneiss; and bitu- 
minous coal occurs in the oolitic and new red sand- 
stone series, as well as in the coal measures. An 
extensive coal-field in Scotland is contained in the 
lias rock ; and Humboldt, Daubuisson, and other 
able geologists, consider the red sandstone group 
and the coal measures as belonging to the same 
formation. All the facts on this subject show that 
the coal-beds occur at very unequal intervals, and 
that the causes which produced them have acted 
irregularly, and that it is a hasty generalization, as 
Professor Hitchcock observes, which would limit 
workable coal to the coal measures. This able ge- 
ologist accordingly, so far from discouraging explo- 
rations for coal in the new red sandstone of the 
Connecticut Valley, which is probably equivalent 
to a similar formation in this state, actually rec- 
ommends them. 
Geologists in this country have been too much 
in the habit of instituting a comparison between 
our coal-bearing strata and those of Europe, or of 
making the carboniferous group of England the cri- 
terion by which to judge of the existence of coal 
here. But, from what we have stated, the reader 
will perceive that it is doubtful whether the same 
rocks, or precisely the same order of superposition, 
are anywhere traceable : all such speculations are 
based on the hypothesis of universal formations, a 
^Qfiixim -as yet fa?: frojii bjeing established^ 
