A PIECE OF COAL. 183 
those olden days, when they grew thick and tall in 
the lonely marshes where plants and trees were the 
chief inhabitants. We find no traces in the clay-beds 
of the coal to lead us to suppose that men lived in those 
days, nor lions, nor tigers, nor even birds to fly among 
the trees ; but these grand forests were almost silent, 
except when a huge animal something like a gigantic 
newt or frog went croaking through the marsh, or a 
kind of grasshopper chirruped on the land. But these 
forms of life were few and far between, compared to 
the huge trees and tangled masses of ferns and reeds 
which covered the whole ground, or were reflected in 
the bosom of the large pools and lakes round about 
which they grew. 
And now, if you have some idea of the plants and 
trees of the coal, it is time to ask how these plants 
became buried in the earth and made pure coal, 
instead of decaying away and leaving behind only a 
mixture of earth and leaves ? 
To answer this question, I must ask you to take 
another journey with me across the Atlantic to the 
shores of America, and to land at Norfolk in Virginia, 
because there we can see a state of things something 
like the marshes of the coal -forests. All round 
about Norfolk the land is low, flat, and marshy, and 
to the south of the town, stretching far away into 
North Carolina, is a large, desolate swamp, no less 
than forty miles long and twenty-five broad. The 
whole place is one enormous quagmire, overgrown 
with water-plants and trees. The soil is as black as ink 
from the old, dead leaves, grasses, roots, and stems 
