s species of
fossil wood is to be found in the cabinets of collectors, and even in
the hands of lapidaries, and such artificers of polished stones! In some
places, it would seem to be as common as the agate.

I shall only mention a specimen in my own collection. It is wood
petrified with calcareous earth, and mineralised with pyrites. This
specimen of wood contains in itself, even without the stratum of stone
in which it is embedded, the most perfect record of its genealogy.
It had been eaten or perforated by those sea worms which destroy the
bottoms of our ships. There is the clearest evidence of this truth.
Therefore, this wood had grown upon land which flood above the level of
sea, while the present land was only forming at the bottom of the ocean.

Wood is the most substantial part of plants, as shells are the more
permanent part of marine animals. It is not, however, the woody part
alone of the ancient vegetable world that is transmitted to us in
the record of our mineral pages. We have the type of many species
of foliage, and even of the most delicate flower; for, in this way,
naturalists have determined, according to the Linnaean system, the
species, or at least the genus, of the plant. Thus, the existence of a
vegetable system at the period now in contemplation, so far from being
doubtful, is a matter of physical demonstration.

The profusion of this vegetable matter, delivered into the ocean, which
then generated land, is also evidenced in the amazing quantities of
mineral coal which is to be found in perhaps every region of the earth.

Nothing can be more certain, than that all the coaly or bituminous
strata have had their origin from the substance of vegetable bodies
that grew upon the land. Those strata, tho', in general, perfectly
consolidated, often separate horizontally in certain places; and there
we find the fibrous or vascular structure of the vegetable bodies.
Consequently, there is no doubt of fossil coal being a substance
of vegetable production, however animal substances also may have
contributed in forming this collection of oleaginous or inflammable
matter.

Having thus ascertained the state of a former earth, in which plants
and animals had lived, as well as the gradual production of the present
earth, composed from the materials of a former world, it must be
evident, that here are two operations which are necessarily consecutive.
The formation of the present earth necessarily involves the