220 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGEAPHY AND TRAVEL 
coal brought out of the levels. It is clearly the product, 
not of a bed of peat produced by the decay of small 
vegetation, but of a mass of huge timber. At least one 
half of the mass displays the grain and structure of wood, 
and frequently it separates naturally into the concentric 
layers of dicotyledonous wood. All the specimens I have 
examined have exactly the structure of the dipteraceous 
trees now forming the bulk of the timber growing above 
them. The trees must have been of vast dimensions. I 
traced one trunk upwards of 60 feet, and for the whole 
of that distance it was not less than 8 feet wide. They 
are all prostrate and slightly compressed, and lie crossing 
each other in all directions. What makes the resemblance 
of this coal to the wood of the Dipteracese still more 
striking is the existence in it of thickly scattered masses 
of semi-transparent resin dispersed through its substance. 
The clay below the coal contains a few carbonaceous 
particles, but no trace of Stigmaria or any other forms of 
fossil roots. In the shale above the coal are found 
occasionally erect trunks of small size, apparently, from 
the coats of their bark, dicotyledonous, but their whole 
substance converted into soft pulverulent coal; and, more 
rarely, palm trunks, also erect but solidified, and excess¬ 
ively hard. Impressions of leaves are in vast abundance, 
though rarely perfect. I have procured specimens of 
nine species of dicotyledons, of which two so closely re¬ 
semble an existing species of Barringtonia and a diptera¬ 
ceous plant which yields an oily resin named ‘ druingf 
that it is difficult to believe them not identical. Besides 
these are two or three species of ferns, a large flag-shaped 
leaf like a Crinurn, something closely resembling a large 
thick-stemmed confervoid alga, and four or five species of 
palms, one flabelliform and four pinnate, one of the latter 
very closely resembling an existing species. These vege- 
