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The same species of plants are to be met with throughout the whole thickness of a coal-field, and the youngest are not sensibly different from the oldest. But more than this. Notwithstanding that the carboniferous period is separated from us by more than the whole time represented by the secondary and tertiary formations, the great types of vegetation were as distinct then as now.
Suppose it be 12,000 feet which is 240 times the thickness of the actual coal is there any reason why we should believe it may not have taken 240 times as long to form? I know of none. But, in this case, the time which the coal-field represents would be 25,000 x 240 = 6,000,000 years.
Passing across this older ridge of denuded Silurian and other rocks, we reach the famous Illinois and Indiana coal-field, whose coal-measures lie in a broad trough, bounded on the west by the uprising of the carboniferous limestone of the upper Mississippi. This limestone formation appears here for the first time, having been absent on the eastern side of the Ohio anticline.
About 1630 one Master Beaumont laid down broad wooden rails near Newcastle, on which a single horse could haul fifty or sixty bushels of coal. The new device spread rapidly through the whole Tyneside coal-field. A century later it became the custom to nail thin strips of wrought iron to the wooden rails, and about 1767 cast-iron rails were first used.
Arrived on the ground, he went carefully over the entire length of the proposed line, to Convins, the Forest of Ardennes, and Rocroi, across the French frontier; examining the bearings of the coal-field, the slate and marble quarries, and the numerous iron-mines in existence between the Sambre and the Meuse, as well as carefully exploring the ravines which extended through the district, in order to satisfy himself that the best possible route had been selected.
The existence of a coal-field has been traced from Labuan to the islands of Kayn-arang which words, in fact, mean coal island to the island of Chermin, and from thence to the mainland over a distance of thirty miles.
It is stated that there exist 333 feet of coal, all the seams of which exceed 2-1/2 feet, and that in the aggregate there is here, within a workable depth, the scarcely conceivable quantity of 50,000 million tons of coal. The coal-field of Upper Silesia, occupying an area about 20 miles long by 15 miles broad, is estimated to contain some 10,000 feet of strata, with 333 feet of good coal.
As the Address of 1862 was passing through the press, I was able to mention, in a note, the discovery of a large Labyrinthodont, with well-ossified vertebrae, in the Edinburgh coal-field.
When, however, we pass to the continent, we find many instances, such as that of the coal-field of Central France, in which the seams attain vast thicknesses, many of them actually reaching 40 and 60 feet, and sometimes even 80 feet. One of the seams in the district of St.
Steps had been taken to prevent the price of coal being raised to consumers, and this was shortly to be followed by the Government acquisition of the whole of the South Wales coal-field. Already a movement was afoot to regulate the food-supply and to restrict expensive luxuries.
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