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These marks of decay in the marine life continue into the beds just after the Carboniferous, known as the Permian, which are really the last stages of the coal-bearing period. When with the changing time we pass to the beds known as the Triassic, which were made just after the close of the Carboniferous time, we find the earth undergoing swift changes in its life.
The coal-bearing strata in Wales, by their gradual submergence, have attained a thickness of 12,000 feet; in Nova Scotia of 14,570 feet. So slow and so steady was this submergence, that erect trees stand one above another on successive levels; seventeen such repetitions may be counted in a thickness of 4,515 feet. The age of the trees is proved by their size, some being four feet in diameter.
Many faults have become filled with crystalline minerals in the form of veins of ore, deposited by infiltrating waters percolating through the natural fissures. In considering the formation and structure of the better-known coal-bearing beds of the carboniferous age, we must not lose sight of the fact that important beds of coal also occur in strata of much more recent date.
There were vast marshes in which there accumulated the larger part of the valuable coal seams of the West. The Laramie is the coal-bearing series of the West, as the Pennsylvanian is of the eastern part of our country. THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN DEFORMATION. At the close of the Cretaceous we enter upon an epoch of mountain-making far more extensive than any which the continent had witnessed.
The presence of coal has indeed given the name to the formation, the word "carboniferous" meaning "coal-bearing," but in taking a comprehensive view of the position which it occupies in the bowels of the earth, it will be necessary to take into consideration the strata in which it is found, and the conditions, so far as are known, under which these were deposited.
This may also be said of the coal-fields in the governments of Tula and Kaluga, and of those important coal-bearing strata near the river Donetz, stretching to the northern corner of the Sea of Azov. In the last-named, the seams are spread over an area of 11,000 square miles, in which there are forty-four workable seams containing 114 feet of coal.
The coal-miner was, however, still a creation of the future, and even as peat is collected in Ireland at the present day for fuel, without the laborious process of mining for it, so those people living in coal-bearing districts found their needs satisfied by the quantity of coal, small as it was, which appeared ready to hand on the sides of the carboniferous mountains.
A very large proportion of the plants which have been found in the coal-bearing strata consists of numerous species of ferns, the number of actual species which have been preserved for us in our English coal, being double the number now existing in Europe.
The Department of State, in view of proofs filed with it in 1906, showing the American possession, occupation, and working of certain coal-bearing lands in Spitzbergen, accepted the invitation under the reservation above stated, and under the further reservation that all interests in those islands already vested should be protected and that there should be equality of opportunity for the future.
The coal itself, even in Great Britain and Belgium, where it is most abundant, constitutes but an insignificant portion of the whole mass. In South Wales, for example, the thickness of the coal-bearing strata has been estimated at between 11,000 and 12,000 feet, while the various coal seams, about 80 in number, do not, according to Professor Phillips, exceed in the aggregate 120 feet.
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