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The Fairy-Land of Science
·
Arabella B. Buckley
165
At
last,
after
long
ages,
when
the
thick
mass
of
sandstones
above
the
bed
b
(Fig.
46)
had
been
laid
down,
the
sinking
must
have
stopped
and
the
land
have
risen
a
little,
so
that
the
sea
was
driven
back;
and
then
the
rivers
would
bring
down
earth
again
and
make
another
clay-bed.
Then
a
new
forest
would
spring
up,
the
ferns,
Calamites,
Lepidodendrons,
and
Sigillarias
would
gradually
form
another
jungle,
and
many
hundred
of
feet
above
the
buried
coal-bed
b,
a
second
bed
of
peat
and
vegetable
matter
would
begin
to
accumulate
to
form
the
coal-bed
a.
Such
is
the
history
of
how
the
coal
which
we
now
dig
out
of
the
depths
of
the
earth
once
grew
as
beautiful
plants
on
the
surface.
We
cannot
tell
exactly
all
the
ground
over
which
these
forests
grew
in
England,
because
some
of
the
coal
they
made
has
been
carried
away
since
by
rivers
and
cut
down
by
the
waves
of
the
sea,
but
we
can
say
that
wherever
there
is
coal
now,
there
they
must
have
been
then.
Try
and
picture
to
yourselves
that
on
the
east
coast
of
Northumberland
and
Durham,
where
all
is
now
black
with
coal-
dust,
and
grimy
with
the
smoke
of
furnaces;
and
where
the
noise
of
hammers
and
steam-engines,
and
of
carts
and
trucks
hurrying
to
and
fro,
makes
the
country
re-echo
with
the
sound
of
labour;
there
ages
ago
in
the
silent
swamp
shaded
with
monster
trees,
one
thin
layer
of
plants
after
another
was
formed,
year
after
year,
to
become
the
coal
we
now
value
so
much.
In
Lancashire,
busy
Lancashire,
the
same
thing
was
happening,
and
even
in
the
middle
of
Yorkshire
and
Derbyshire
the
sea
must
have
come
up
and
washed
a
silent
shore
where
a
vast
forest
spread
out
over
at
least
700
or
800
square
miles.
In
Stafford-shire,
too,
which
is
now
almost
the
middle
of
England,
another
small
coal-field
tells
the
same
story,
while
in
South
Wales
the
deep
coal-mines
and
number
of
coal-seams
remind
us
how
for
centuries
and
centuries
forests
must
have
flourished
and
have
disappeared
over
and
over
again
under
the
sand
of
the
sea.
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