Joseph Beete Jukes

“ When, on the other hand, the materials of which a single bed, or any set of beds, is composed are of very fine grain, those materials are generally equally diffused over a very wide area, changes in thickness are rare and occur very gradually, and the bed or set of beds where it comes to an end does so very gradually, and sometimes almost insensibly. ”

“ The way in which thick and thin seams of sandstone and coal alternated occasionally, with little seams of perfectly bright pure coal in the regularly stratified sandstone, while thick beds of pure bright coal are often flaked by little partings of clean sand throughout their thickness over considerable areas, seems to me to render it impossible to suppose otherwise than that their deposition and stratification was produced by the same agent. ”

“ On the Formation of Coal.
Coal is universally allowed to be of vegetable origin; it is a mass of the débris of trees and plants, that having been buried under mud and sand, has been subsequently converted into coal, the muds and sands being similarly converted into shales, and clays, and sandstones. ”

“ Botanists tell us that all the plants entering into the composition of coal, so far as they have been able to trace and verify any part of their structure, appear to have been not aquatic but terrestrial plants. ”

“ I must confess the idea of those coals being formed only at or above the surface of the water, while all the beds between the coals were deposited below the surface of the water, becomes one that I find it impossible to entertain. ”

“ When, however, the accumoulation of the vast quantity of vegetable matter necessary for the production of the Thick coal was nearly completed, a very partial and local subsidence took place in one or two localities, bending down the previously formed beds into a hollow or pool of water, sufficiently deep for 128 feet of shale and sandstone to be accumulated, and thus another level floor formed for the growth of the upper bed of coal, which grew partly on the shale and sandstone, and partly on the undepressed coal. ”

“ It has been formerly pointed out from facts observed in this district, which are in perfect harmony with the well-known facts elsewhere, that single beds of stratified rocks have generally an area greater, and a thickness less, in proportion to the fineness of the materials of which they are composed. When the- materials are coarse they are usually heaped together co as to form a thick bed in one place, which gets rapidly thinner in different directions, and often soon ends altogether. ”