The following conclusions are clearly deducible:
1. The Annular system was a region of microscopic life and infusorial
forms. Coal being deposited by sea-water carried down with it marine
forms, and others settled upon its surface.
2. The carbon deposits must have borne down a vast amount of marine
vegetation and buried it upon the sea bottom. In swamp marshes the
vegetation would have been entirely different.
3. When a carbon fall was borne to the seas and settled where limestone
strata prevailed it would indicate great distance from the shore, and
here the roof shales of the coal must be necessarily free from land
fossils. Coal beds amongst sandstone strata indicate depositions near
shore, and may contain land fossils.
4. The coal beds must be more heavily developed toward polar regions,
and most free from impurities.
5. All carbon downfalls must have been attended by great cataclysms of
snow, or water, or both.
6. A coal vein deposited near a volcano, or mechanical heat arising
therefrom would be metamorphosed into heavier and harder forms of
carbon. But as all grades must have existed in the Annular system as
primitive distillates, all of these forms may be found in lands where
no strata disturbance has taken place.
7. The heavy carbon, as the anthracite and semi-bituminous particles
would be borne to the deep seas, while the lighter would float into
shallow water. Hence a submarine valley might have a deposit of
anthracite while a neighboring bed on an elevation might be bituminous.
8. In both northern and southern hemispheres the coal must be more
valuable as we proceed from the equator.
9. There must have been carbon falls in all ages, and the first were
the purest and the best, while the last to descend must have been the
lightest and poorest, and must be found near the surface, or are the
foundations of recent peat bogs.
Peat vegetation, or moss known by the generic name of _Sphagnous_, has
led many to believe it to be the origin of that product. But these
_sphagnous_ mosses could never have planted themselves over the medial
and colder latitudes if the carbon beds necessary to sustain them had
not previously been planted there. If coal and peat are vegetable
products they should exist in greater abundance in tropical regions;
but they are found in limited quantity there.