immediately on the granite and other primary rocks, the intermediate
strata not having been found at those places. In America, the kind
called anthracite occurs among the slate beds, and this species also
abounds more in the mountain limestone than with us. These last
circumstances only shew that different parts of the earth's surface
did not all witness the same events of a certain fixed series exactly
at the same time. There had been an exhibition of dry land about the
site of America, a little earlier than in Europe.

Some features of the condition of the earth during the deposition of
the carboniferous group, are made out with a clearness which must
satisfy most minds. First we are told of a time when carbonate of
lime was formed in vast abundance at the bottoms of profound seas,
accompanied by an unusually large population of corals and
encrinites; while in some parts of the earth there were patches of
dry land, covered with a luxuriant vegetation. Next we have a
comparatively brief period of volcanic disturbance, (when the
conglomerate was formed.) Then the causes favourable to the so
abundant production of limestone, and the large population of marine
acrita, decline, and we find the masses of dry land increase in
number and extent, and begin to bear an amount of forest vegetation,
far exceeding that of the most sheltered tropical spots of the
present surface. The climate, even in the latitude of Baffin's Bay,
was torrid, and perhaps the atmosphere contained a larger charge of
carbonic acid gas (the material of vegetation) than it now does. The
forests or thickets of the period, included no species of plants now
known upon earth. They mainly consisted of gigantic shrubs, which
are either not represented by any existing types, or are akin to
kinds which are now only found in small and lowly forms. That these
forests grew upon a Polynesia, or multitude of small islands, is