The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes by Edward A. Martin
page 41 of 147 (27%)
page 41 of 147 (27%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
[Illustration: FIG. 23.--_Cyathophyllum_. Coral in encrinital limestone.] We are unable to believe in the continuity of our coal-beds with those of America, for the great source of sediment in those times was a continent situated on the site of the Atlantic Ocean, and it is owing to this extensive continent that the forms of _flora_ found in the coal-beds in each country bear so close a resemblance to one another, and also that the encrinital limestone which was formed in the purer depths of the ocean on the east, became mixed with silt, and formed masses of shaly impure limestone in the south-western parts of Ireland. It must be noted that, although we may attribute to upheaval from beneath the fact that the bed of the sea became temporarily raised at each period into dry land, the deposits of sand or shale would at the same time be tending to shallow the bed, and this alone would assist the process of upheaval by bringing the land at least very near to the surface of the water. Each upheaval, however, could have been but a temporary arrest of the great movement of crust subsidence which was going on throughout the coal period, so that, at its close, when the last coal forest grew upon the surface of the land, there had disappeared, in the case of South Wales, a thickness of 11,000 feet of material. Of the many remarkable things in connection with coal-beds, not the least is the state of purity in which coal is found. On the floor of each forest there would be many a streamlet or even small river which would wend its way to meet the not very distant sea, and it is surprising at first that so little sediment found its way into the coal itself. But |
|