Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/62

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The strata in which these vegetable remains have been collected together in such vast abundance have been justly designated by the name of the carboniferous order, or great coal formation. (See Conybeare and Phillips's Geology of England and Wales, book iii.) It is in this formation chiefly, that the remains of plants of a former world have been preserved and converted into beds of mineral coal; having been transported to the bottom of former seas and estuaries, or lakes, and buried in beds of sand and mud, which have since been changed into sandstone and shale. (See Pl. 1, sec. 14.)