The Fairy-Land of Science

But how about the coal itself? It seems likely, when we find roots below and leaves and stems above, that the middle is made of plants, but can we prove it? We shall see presently that it has been so crushed and altered by being buried deep in the ground that the traces of leaves have almost been destroyed, though people who are used to examining with the microscope, can see the crushed remains of plants in thin slices of coal. But fortunately for us, perfect pieces of plants have been preserved even in the coal-bed itself. Do you remember our learning in Lecture IV, that water with lime in it petrifies things, that is, leaves carbonate of lime to fill up grain by grain the fibres of an animal or plant as the living matter decays, and so keeps an exact representation of the object? Now, it so happens that in a coal-bed at South Ouram, near Halifax, as well as in some other places, carbonate of lime trickled in before the plants were turned into coal, and made some round nodules in the plant-bed, which look like cannon- balls. Afterwards, when all the rest of the bed was turned into coal, these round balls remained crystallized, and by cutting thin transparent slices across the nodule we can distinctly see the leaves and stems and curious little round bodies which make up the coal. Several such sections may be seen at the British Museum, and when we compare these fragments of plants with those which we find above and below the coal-bed, we find that they agree, thus proving that coal is made of plants, and of those plants whose roots grew in the clay floor, while their heads reached up far above where the roof now is.