72 
above its present level, as to cover even the summits of those 
secondary mountains vsrhich contain the remains of tropical plants. 
But whether we suppose these plants to have grown near the spot 
where they are found, or to have been carried thither, from different 
parts, by the force of an impelling flood, it is equally difficult, he 
remarks, to conceive, how organized beings, which, in order to live, 
require such a vast difference in temperature and in seasons, could 
live on the same spot : or how their remains could (from climates so 
widely distant) be brought together in the same place, by one common 
dislocating cause. To this ancient order of fossil vegetables belong 
whatever retains a vegetable shape, found in or near coal mines, 
and (to judge from the places where they have been found) the 
greater part of the agatized woods. 
The second order of fossil vegetables, comprehends those which 
are found in the strata of clay and sand ; materials which are the 
result of slow depositions of the sea, and of rivers ; agents still at 
work, under the present constitution of our planet. These vegetable 
remains are found, in such fiat countries as may be considered to be 
of a new formation. The vegetable organization still subsists, at 
least, in part; and this vegetable substance has suffered a change 
only in colour, smell, or consistence; alterations which are pro- 
duced by the development of their oily and bituminous parts, or 
by their natural progress towards rottenness. To this description of 
fossil vegetables, the decayed trees, and other vegetable remains, 
belong, which constitute the greater part of the mass of which this 
moor is formed. Although these trees are standing in their native 
soil. Dr. de Serrai reminds us, that the level in which they are found 
cannot be the same as that in which they grew ; and we should there- 
fore, conclude, that the forest here described, grew in a level high 
enough to permit its vegetation, which could not have been the 
case if it had been so near the sea, or below the common level of 
