The usually accepted theory concerning the origin of coal is that it
was formed from an ancient vegetation that grew largely in peat and
swamp marshes. This theory the Vailan system overthrows.
Every atom of the great mass of carbon now forming the coal deposits
must have been a distilled product of a primitive igneous process
before the plant could possibly appropriate it. Every intelligent
chemist knows that the great telluric gas furnace of primitive times
was competent to produce all the carbon now found in the crust of the
earth. Soot, that sometimes takes fire in our chimneys, is deposited
in infinitesimal smoke particles. Hence, smoke from burning carbon is
simply a fuel which makes it evident that the smoke which arose from
the igneous earth was a fuel hydro-carbon. The dark belts of Saturn and
Jupiter are doubtless strata of carbon revolving about those planets.
If the Vailan theory is true the graphites and heavier forms of carbon
were the first to fall upon the earth after the igneous period was
passed, and will be found in its first aqueous beds, and generally
unassociated with fossil vegetation. This is precisely what we do
find. Both Dana and Dawson bear testimony to the fact that graphite is
a very common mineral in the older beds, and that the primitive carbon
beds are equal in gravity to that of similar areas in the carboniferous
system.
Why no fossil plants in the earlier coal deposits? Because no plants
grew at that time. Then we must look for its origin elsewhere than in
plants. If coal be a vegetable product, so is graphite. To say that
animal organism aided in the process simply adds to the difficulty,
since it is carbon that makes the organism and not the organism the
carbon. But suppose fossil plants were found in graphite, would it be
any more evidence that they formed it than that they formed clay or
sandrock in which they are found? The simple fact that organic fossils
are found in carbon beds changed to carbon affords no evidence that
these organisms made the beds.
We find vegetable remains in coal seams just as we find them in any
other rock. A coal plant as a lepidodendron, may begin in the lower
clay, and pierce through a coal seam into the overhanging shale
and sandstone. In the first it is a clay fossil, in the second a
carbonaceous fossil, and in the third a silicious fossil. The fact is
the trunk of a tree in an upright position in a coal bed, which is
quite common, proves that the coal formed around it rapidly. It would
require forty feet of vegetable debris to make five feet of carbon.
Some coal seams are 300 feet thick, which would require at least 2,400
feet of vegetable growth in its formation, which is an impossibility.
As a vegetable product coal would form very slowly, but from the
Vailan system would require but a few hours, or days at most, to lay it
down.
Plants found in coal burn with difficulty, which ought not to be
true if they contained a resinous sap, or bituminous matter. In many
instances you can find a dozen fossil plants in the overlying clay to
where you can find one in coal. They are clay fossils because they are
imbedded in clay, same as fossils in coal are carbon because imbedded
in carbon.
If coal is compressed peat, as some would have us believe, why do we
not find fibres running vertically through it? You may examine peat
after a pressure of twenty tons to the square inch has been exerted,
and yet the vertical structure of the mass will be apparent. Since we
find abundance of rootlets running in all directions, vertically as
well as horizontally in the under clays of coal beds it is evident that
coal is not a metamorphosed peat.
Imagine an expanse of marshes 100,000 square miles in extent, covered
with calamites, ferns, sigillaria, lepidodendra remaining motionless
for countless centuries, and then suddenly sinking beneath the waves
of the sea in order to receive a sea-formed bed for a covering; and
in the universal burial to preserve but a few fossils, and they in a
horizontal position, while in the clays immediately above and below the
coal beds they are found in profusion; that in due time the vast area
arose from its baptism, and on the thin layer of clay millions of the
same plants grew until they formed another bed of coal, when it sinks
again beneath the waves, and this oscillation continued until it had
been buried twenty, forty or one hundred times, and you have the old
theory of how coal was formed.
But if the old theory concerning the formation of coal is correct, how
did it occur that the earth in rising out of the ocean stopped each
time in the right place for swamp vegetation to accumulate? According
to the highest authority coal is not formed from sea-plants, for they
cannot emit any considerable amount of caloric, but it is the product
of land plants. Then why do we find coal scattered over a vast area of
sea bottom?
The structure of continents show that they have remained such from
their first formation. Some of the geologic formations, as the
Carboniferous-conglomerates, took place all over the earth at the same
time. How could this be except it came from the Annular system?
Were we to have a shower of carbon dust it would settle to the bottom
of the sea all over the irregularities of the same. Then sand beds
accumulating for ages would settle over it. These would form a greater
thickness in some places than in others; hence a succeeding fall of
carbon settling upon the ocean floor would not form a bed exactly
parallel with the first. This is precisely what we find to be true
in the carbon deposits. The distance in coal seams may vary from
twenty feet in one place to forty feet in another place in the same
neighborhood, which is the result of irregularity in the ocean floor.
Bowlders are found in coal seams which means that coal beds have been
formed under water; and if a foreign bowlder that the coal seam was
formed at the bottom of the ocean. Bowlders have been found in the
middle of coal seams with glacial marks upon them, showing that they
have been dropped from icebergs into the forming coal beds at the
bottom of the sea. Foreign water-worn bowlders are frequently found in
coal beds.
Stratas of coal may be separated by layers of clay not more than half
an inch in thickness; how could vegetation take root in so thin a layer
of clay sufficient to form the overlying coal seam of probably several
feet? Suppose a great carbon fund should float from the Arctic ocean
into Hudson Bay. It would settle upon an undulating bottom, and if a
flood of muddy water from the surrounding rivers should empty into the
bay while the carbon bed was forming, a thin clay bed would be the
result. This might continue as long as the carbon was brought from the
Arctic regions.
The floating mass of primitive carbon clouds after they entered the
atmosphere and floated away for centuries, perhaps, toward the polar
regions in their efforts to reach the earth, became a tissue of
evolving vegetable organisms and vegetable forms. Take fresh soot from
a furnace soon as it is formed, subject it to hot vapors from boiling
waters and store it away in an open vessel of water, and you will soon
see vegetable and animal organisms start into being. Then why not find
organisms in revolving soot clouds in the Annular system?
Marine vegetation exists on the sea bottom, and a carbon sediment
rapidly accumulating would certainly involve it.
Under almost all the carbon veins lies a deposit of fire clay. Strange
that adjoining a highly combustible bed, a substance should be
invariably planted that is so refractory as to be used for crucibles
in fusing almost every known metal! In this bed lies involved a
profuse marine vegetation, and the preservation of its delicate
lineaments proves that it was suddenly involved. It is more generally
present under coal veins that are more distant from the tropics, and
_invariably_ in the most distant ones. The fire clay-dust sublimed in
the great telluric crucible arose to commingle with primitive vapors
and returned with them. When a carbon fall occurred the clay matter
being of greater specific gravity was the first to find its way to the
ocean floor.
This fire clay is found under beds of primitive graphite where
no vegetation is involved, and therefore cannot be a vegetable
distillation. It is found where glacial action is unknown, and cannot
be mud pulverized by moving ice. Every one of the more than seventy
coal seams of the Nova Scotia regions has its characteristic clay-bed.
When we see trees standing in and surrounded by this clay we are forced
to admit a rapid accumulation.
Limestone is a deep sea formation and the Vailan system demands that
standing trees should not be found in it. Only such limestone formation
or strata as were deposited as mechanical precipitation could be
formed in shallow waters, especially in regions beyond the tropics.
A limestone stratum deposited among shore deposits or continental
detritus points directly to Annular origin and vegetable fossils will
occur in the upper clays. Here geologists have an opportunity to prove
or disprove the Annular problem.
Coal and peat are not found in the tropics where they ought to be found
if vegetation produced them. And if they could be found there it would
sweep the Vailan system from its foundations. They are found, however,
just where this system says they must be found. Why is peat found
in the ocean, and in the thousands of lakes and ponds where no peat
vegetation is now growing? Suppose we find a peat bed forty feet thick,
it must have been at one time a lake with forty feet of water, and how
did the peat begin to grow? Peat forms slowly and the rains and storms
would have worked mud, etc., more rapidly into it than the peat would
have filled it. It would neither have grown from the top nor from the
bottom. The foundation carbon fell from the Annular fund.