Could we once resolve this
question, every other appearance might be easily explained. Let us
therefore now endeavour to discover a principle for the resolving of
this problem.
There are two ways in which vegetable bodies may be, in part at least,
resolved into that subtilised state of bituminous matter after which we
inquire; the one of these is by means of fire, the other by water. We
shall now consider these severally as the means of forming bituminous
strata, although they may be both employed by nature in this work.
When vegetable bodies are made to burn, there is always more or less of
a fuliginous substance formed; but this fuliginous substance is no
other than a bituminous body in that subtilised state in which it is
indefinitely divided, and may be mixed uniformly with any mass of matter
equally subtilised with itself. But this is precisely what we want, in
order to compose the strata of coal in question. If, therefore, there
were to be found in the ocean such a fund of this fuliginous substance
as might suffice for the formation of bituminous strata, no difficulty
would be left in explaining the original of fossil coal.
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