It will thus appear, that the regular form, and horizontal direction of
strata throughout this country of coal, now under contemplation, has
been broken and disordered by the eruption and interjection of those
masses of basaltic stone or subterraneous lava; and thus may be
explained not only the disorders and irregularities of coal strata, but
also the different qualities of this bituminous substance from its
more natural state to that of a perfect coal or fixed infusible and
combustible substance burning without smoke. This happens sometimes to a
part of a coal stratum which approaches the whin-stone.
Having thus stated the case of combustible or bituminous strata, I would
ask those naturalists, who adhere to the theory of infiltration and the
operation of water alone, how they are to conceive those strata formed
and consolidated. They must consider, that here are immense bodies of
those combustible strata, under hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fathoms
of sand-stone, iron-stone, argillaceous and calcareous strata. If they
are to suppose bituminous bodies collected at the bottom of the sea,
they must say from whence that bitumen had come; for, with regard to the
strata below those bituminous bodies, above them, and between them,
we see perfectly from whence had come the materials of which they are
formed.
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