6. A coal vein deposited near a volcano, or mechanical heat arising therefrom would be metamorphosed into heavier and harder forms of carbon. But as all grades must have existed in the Annular system as primitive distillates, all of these forms may be found in lands where no strata disturbance has taken place. 7. The heavy carbon, as the anthracite and semi-bituminous particles would be borne to the deep seas, while the lighter would float into shallow water. Hence a submarine valley might have a deposit of anthracite while a neighboring bed on an elevation might be bituminous. 8. In both northern and southern hemispheres the coal must be more valuable as we proceed from the equator. 9. There must have been carbon falls in all ages, and the first were the purest and the best, while the last to descend must have been the lightest and poorest, and must be found near the surface, or are the foundations of recent peat bogs. Peat vegetation, or moss known by the generic name of _Sphagnous_, has led many to believe it to be the origin of that product. But these _sphagnous_ mosses could never have planted themselves over the medial and colder latitudes if the carbon beds necessary to sustain them had not previously been planted there. If coal and peat are vegetable products they should exist in greater abundance in tropical regions; but they are found in limited quantity there. IS COAL A VEGETABLE PRODUCT? The usually accepted theory concerning the origin of coal is that it was formed from an ancient vegetation that grew largely in peat and swamp marshes. This theory the Vailan system overthrows. Every atom of the great mass of carbon now forming the coal deposits must have been a distilled product of a primitive igneous process before the plant could possibly appropriate it. Every intelligent chemist knows that the great telluric gas furnace of primitive times was competent to produce all the carbon now found in the crust of the earth. Soot, that sometimes takes fire in our chimneys, is deposited in infinitesimal smoke particles. Hence, smoke from burning carbon is simply a fuel which makes it evident that the smoke which arose from the igneous earth was a fuel hydro-carbon. The dark belts of Saturn and Jupiter are doubtless strata of carbon revolving about those planets. If the Vailan theory is true the graphites and heavier forms of carbon were the first to fall upon the earth after the igneous period was passed, and will be found in its first aqueous beds, and generally unassociated with fossil vegetation. This is precisely what we do find. Both Dana and Dawson bear testimony to the fact that graphite is a very common mineral in the older beds, and that the primitive carbon beds are equal in gravity to that of similar areas in the carboniferous system.