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Such would be the summer climate, the spring and autumn 
would be similar to our present spring and autumn, but the 
winter would be very severe. During the winter the sun 
would quit us for a period equal to that which he had passed 
entirely above the horizon in England. Our plants would 
then be frozen, and would either fall to the ground and be 
covered with deep snow, or remain, as does our holly, &c, 
until next summer revivified them. As, however, most of the 
coal flora are large succulent plants, it is more probable that 
they would fall and die than that they would stand the 
severe winter. Covered with snow, which the next summer 
would melt, their seed would again spring up and luxuriance 
would prevail. It has been decided by nearly all the 
authorities, that an extra-tropical heat was necessary to form 
the coal plants. The tropics extending to the poles will 
give this great heat. It has also been decided that water and 
an exclusion of air was necessary to form the coal. The fall 
and melting of snow when the tropics extended to the poles 
will also grant this. Thus then, if the tropics did ever extend 
to the poles, the mystery of coal beds in England, America, 
Australia, &c, at once vanishes. The tropical remains in 
northern regions is no longer puzzling ; and a simple 
solution of a great paradox is at once given. These evidences 
are facts which cannot be denied, but which have scarcely 
been spoken about or explained ; they have in reality been 
rather kept back because inexplicable. If the tropics had 
ever extended far to the north and south, there ought to be 
probably other evidences of such an important matter besides 
even those convincing ones which have already been mentioned. 
History, surely, would have referred to it. And is it not so ? 
Yes, truly, in ancient history the fact is recorded over and 
over again ; the wise men of the East, who built a city vast 
and grand as that of Babylon, who raised the Pyramids, and 
who transported vast blocks of stone which would defeat the 
