240 
Gnomes ! you then taught intruding dews to pass 
Through time-fall’n woods, and root in wove morass, 
Age after age ; and with filtration fine 
Dispart, from earths and sulphurs, the saline. 
Botanic Garden, Canto II. 1. 115. 
“ In other circumstances,” the Doctor adds, “ probably where 
less moisture has prevailed, morasses seem to have undergone a fer- 
mentation, as other vegetable matter ; new hay is liable to do so, 
from the great quantity of sugar it contains. From the great heat 
thus produced in the lower parts of immense beds of morass, the 
phlogistic part, or oil, or asphaltum, becomes distilled, and rising 
into higher strata, becomes again condensed, forming coal-beds of 
greater or less purity, according to their greater or less quantity of 
inflammable matter ; at the same time the clay beds become purer 
or less so, as the phlogistic part is more or less completely exhaled 
from them*.” 
Mr. Kirwan differs entirely from every one of these opinions ; 
and derives the origin of coal from the disintegration, and decom- 
position, of primeval mountains, containing a large proportion of 
carbonaceous and bituminous matters. — But it is proper that this 
novel and interesting suggestion should not be deprived of the 
advantages it must derive, from being given in Mr. Kirwan’s 
own words : 
“My opinion,” Mr. Kirwan says, “is, that coal-mines, or strata 
of coal, as well as the mountains or hills in which they are found, 
owe their origin to the disintegration, and decomposition, of primaeval 
mountains, either now totally destroyed, or whose height and 
bulk, in consequence of such disintegration, are now considerably 
lessened. And that these rocks, anciently destroyed, contained. 
* Additional Notes to Botanic Garden, note xvii. 
