air and generates a temperature resembling that of a more northern climate, or a region more elevated above the level of the sea. Numerous trunks of large and tall trees lie buried in the black mire of the morass. In so loose a soil they are easily overthrown by winds, and nearly as many have been found lying beneath the surface of the peaty soil as standing erect upon it. When thrown down, they are soon covered by water; and keeping wet, they never decompose, except the sapwood, which is less than an inch thick. Much of the timber is obtained by sounding a foot or two below the surface, and it is sawn into planks while half under water. The Great Dismal has been described as being highest towards its centre. Here, however, there is. an extensive lake of an oval form, seven miles long and more than five wide, the depth, where greatest, fifteen feet; and its bottom consisting of mud like the swamp, but sometimes with a pure white sand, a foot deep, covering the mud. The water is transparent, though tinged of a pale brown colour, like that of our peat-mosses, and contains abundance of fish. This sheet of water is usually even with its banks, on which a thick and tall forest grows. is no beach, for the bank sinks perpendicularly; so that if the waters are lowered several feet, it makes no alteration in the breadth of the lake. There Much timber has been cut down and carried out from the swamp by means of canals, which are perfectly straight for long distances, with the trees on each side arching over, and almost joining their branches across, so that they throw a dark shade on the water, which of itself looks black, being coloured as before mentioned. When the boats emerge from the gloom of these avenues into the lake, the scene is said to be "as beautiful as fairyland." The bears inhabiting the swamp climb trees in search of acorns and gum-berries, breaking off large boughs of the oaks in order to draw the acorns near to them. These same bears are said to kill hogs and There are also wild cats, and occasionally even cows. a solitary wolf, in the morass. That the ancient seams of coal were produced for the most part by terrestrial plants of all sizes, not drifted but growing on the spot, is a theory more and more generally adopted in modern times; and the growth of what is called sponge in such a swamp and in such a climate as the Great Dismal, already covering so many square miles of a low, level region, bordering the sea, and capable of spreading itself indefinitely over the adjacent country, helps us greatly to conceive the manner in which the coal of the ancient carboniferous rocks may have been formed. The heat, perhaps, may not have been excessive when the coal-measures originated, but the entire absence of frost, with a warm and damp atmosphere, may have enabled tropical forms to flourish in latitudes far distant from the line. Huge swamps in a rainy climate, standing above the level of the surrounding firm land, and supporting a dense forest, may have spread far and wide, invading the plains, like some European peat-mosses when they burst, and the frequent submergence of these masses of vegetable matter beneath seas or estuaries, as often as the land sank down during subterranean movements, may have given rise to the deposition of strata of mud, sand, or limestone immediately upon the vegetable matter. The conversion of successive surfaces into dry land, where other swamps supporting trees may have formed, might give origin to a continued series of coal-measures of great thickness. In some kinds of coal the vegetable texture is apparent throughout under the microscope; in others, it has only partially disappeared. SIR CHARLES LYELL. 23. THE BERMUDAS. Where the remote Bermudas ride He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storms and prelates' rage; On daily visits through the air. He hangs in shades the orange bright Thus sang they in the English boat And all the way, to guide their chime, + ANDREW MARVELL. It is this earth that, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born; it is this alone of all the elements around us that is never found an enemy to man. The earth, gentle and indulgent, ever subservient to the wants of man, spreads his walks with flowers and his table with plenty; returns with interest every good committed to her care, and though she produces the poison, she still supplies the antidote; though constantly teased more to furnish the luxuries of man than his necessities, yet, even to the last, she continues her kind indulgence, and when life is over she piously covers his remains in her bosom.-Pliny. 24. THE YOUNG GEOLOGIST. It was twenty years last February since I set out a little before sunrise to make my first acquaintance with a life of labour and restraint, and I have rarely had a heavier heart than on that morning. I was but a thin, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake; and, woeful change, I was now going to work in a quarry. The portion of my life which had already gone by had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer amongst rocks and woods, a reader of curious books when I could get them, a gleaner of old traditionary stories; and now I was going to exchange all my day-dreams and all my amusements for the kind of life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil. The quarry in which I worked lay on the southern shore of a noble inland bay, with a little clear stream on the one side and a thick fir wood on the other. It had been opened in the old red sandstone of the district, and was overtopped by a huge bank of clay, which rose over it in some places to the height of nearly thirty feet, and which at this time was rent and shivered by a recent frost. A heap of loose fragments, which had fallen from above, blocked up the face of the quarry, and my first employment was to clear them away. The friction of the shovel soon blistered my hands, but the |