al oils, such as
naphtha and petroleum. Oils are also artificially produced from the
so-called waste-products of the gas-works, but in some parts of the world
the process of their manufacture has gone on naturally, and a yearly
increasing quantity is being utilised. In England oil has been pumped up
from the carboniferous strata of Coalbrook Dale, whilst in Sussex it has
been found in smaller quantities, where, in all probability, it has had
its origin in the lignitic beds of the Wealden strata. Immense quantities
are used for fuel by the Russian steamers on the Caspian Sea, the Baku
petroleum wells being a most valuable possession. In Sicily, Persia, and,
far more important, in the United States, mineral oils are found in great
quantity.

In all probability coniferous trees, similar to the living firs, pines,
larches, &c., gave rise for the most part to the mineral oils. The class
of living _coniferae_ is well known for the various oils which it
furnishes naturally, and for others which its representatives yield on
being subjected to distillation. The gradually increasing amount of heat
which we meet the deeper we go beneath the surface, has been the cause of
a slow and continuous distillation, whilst the oil so distilled has found
its way to the surface in the shape of mineral-oil springs, or has
accumulated in troughs in the strata, ready for use, to be drawn up when
a well has been sunk into it.

The plants which have gone to make up the coal are not at once apparent
to the naked eye. We have to search among the shales and clays and
sandstones which enclose the coal-seams, and in these we find petrified
specimens which enable us to build up in our mind pictures of the
vegetable creation which formed the jungles and forests of these
immensely remote ages, and which, densely packed together on the old
forest floor of those days, is now apparent to us as coal.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--_Annularia radiata._ Carboniferous sandstone.]

A very large proportion of the plants which have been found in the
coal-bearing strata consists of numerous species of ferns, the number of
actual species which have been preserved for us in our English coal,
being double the number now existing in Europe. The greater part of these
do not seem to have been very much larger than our own living ferns, and,
indeed, many of them bear a close resemblance to some of our own living
species. The impressions they have left on the shales of the
co