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Updated: May 7, 2025
Though no regular seams of coal were formed, the characteristic imbedded coal-plants are of the genera Cyclopteris and Alethopteris, agreeing with species occurring at much higher levels, and distinct from those of the antecedent Devonian group.
Whole masses of these root-stems, with ribbon-like roots lying scattered near them, are found buried in the layer of clay called the underclay which makes the floor of the coal, and they prove to us that this underclay must have been once the ground in which the roots of the coal-plants grew.
At the distance of 30 miles from the plumbago, there occurs, on the borders of Rhode Island, an impure anthracite in slates containing impressions of coal-plants of the genera Pecopteris, Neuropteris, Calamites, etc.
Are we to believe that all this vegetable matter was brought down by some mighty river and deposited in its delta, or that the coal-plants grew just where we now find the coal?
The granite of Dartmoor, in Devonshire, was formerly supposed to be one of the most ancient of the Plutonic rocks, but is now ascertained to be posterior in date to the culm-measures of that county, which from their position, and, as containing true coal-plants, are now known to be members of the true Carboniferous series.
When you remember these and many more, and also how the seeds of the club-moss now are largely charged with oil, you will easily imagine that the large masses of coal-plants which have been pressed together and broken and crushed, would give out a great deal of oil which, when made very hot, rises up as gas.
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