Why no fossil plants in the earlier coal deposits? Because no plants grew at that time. Then we must look for its origin elsewhere than in plants. If coal be a vegetable product, so is graphite. To say that animal organism aided in the process simply adds to the difficulty, since it is carbon that makes the organism and not the organism the carbon. But suppose fossil plants were found in graphite, would it be any more evidence that they formed it than that they formed clay or sandrock in which they are found? The simple fact that organic fossils are found in carbon beds changed to carbon affords no evidence that these organisms made the beds. We find vegetable remains in coal seams just as we find them in any other rock. A coal plant as a lepidodendron, may begin in the lower clay, and pierce through a coal seam into the overhanging shale and sandstone. In the first it is a clay fossil, in the second a carbonaceous fossil, and in the third a silicious fossil. The fact is the trunk of a tree in an upright position in a coal bed, which is quite common, proves that the coal formed around it rapidly. It would require forty feet of vegetable debris to make five feet of carbon. Some coal seams are 300 feet thick, which would require at least 2,400 feet of vegetable growth in its formation, which is an impossibility. As a vegetable product coal would form very slowly, but from the Vailan system would require but a few hours, or days at most, to lay it down. Plants found in coal burn with difficulty, which ought not to be true if they contained a resinous sap, or bituminous matter. In many instances you can find a dozen fossil plants in the overlying clay to where you can find one in coal. They are clay fossils because they are imbedded in clay, same as fossils in coal are carbon because imbedded in carbon. If coal is compressed peat, as some would have us believe, why do we not find fibres running vertically through it? You may examine peat after a pressure of twenty tons to the square inch has been exerted, and yet the vertical structure of the mass will be apparent. Since we find abundance of rootlets running in all directions, vertically as well as horizontally in the under clays of coal beds it is evident that coal is not a metamorphosed peat.