10 
" of America are inconsiderable when compared with its 
" deposits of coal ; nay, that all the forests gathered into one 
" heap would fail to furnish the materials of a single coal- 
" seam equal to that of Pittsburg, and that for centuries 
" America will continue to derive its commercial greatness 
" from the unprecedented luxuriant flora of the old carboni- 
" ferous ages. Truly, very wonderful are the coal fields of 
" North America ! What shall be said of the flora which 
" originated the coal deposits of Nova Scotia and the 
" United States — deposits twenty times as greed as all those 
" of all Europe put together."* 
In the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, edited by Professors 
Leslie, Jamieson, and Hugh Murray, "Discovery and 
Adventure in the Polar Seas and Regions," respecting the 
geology of Spitsbergen. " In the year 1826 sea-horse fishers 
" from Finmark brought sixty tons of coal from Ice Sound, in 
" north latitude 78°, to Hammerfest, in Norway, and we are 
" informed by Scoresby that the coal is so easily procured, 
" that many of the Dutch fishers, a few years ago, were in the 
" habit of laying in a stock for fuel on the passage homewards. 
" The coal of Spitzbergen extends beyond N. L. 79°, and 
" resembles in some places Cannel-coal, in others it is Brown 
" coal, or lignite." 
The coal formation was met with in Greenland for the first 
time by Scoresby (on the east coast). " It is the same forma- 
" tion," says he, " as that which abounds all round Edinburgh, 
" in short it is that important deposit in which are situated 
" all the great coal mines in Scotland and England. This 
" formation always contains impressions and casts of plants 
" which have a tropical aspect — a circumstance of high 
" interest when combined with the Arctic situation of the 
* The Pittsburg seam is ten feet thick of solid good coal, extending 225 
miles in length, and about 100 miles in breadth. (Lyell's Travels in 
America, p. 27.) 
