like our heath,—­a rush (Juncus grandiflorus), are nearly the only ones that grow on the swampy surface.  These plants, though possessing a very close general resemblance to the English species of the same genera, are different.  In the more level parts of the country the surface of the peat is broken up into little pools of water, which stand at different heights, and appear as if artificially excavated.  Small streams of water, flowing underground, complete the disorganisation of the vegetable matter, and consolidate the whole.

“The climate of the southern part of America appears particularly favourable to the production of peat.  In the Falkland Islands almost every kind of plant, even the coarse grass which covers the whole surface of the land, becomes converted into this substance:  scarcely any situation checks its growth; some of the beds are as much as twelve feet thick, and the lower part becomes so solid when dry that it will hardly burn.  Although every plant lends its aid, yet in most parts the Astelia is the most efficient.

“It is rather a singular circumstance, as being so very different from what occurs in Europe, that I nowhere saw moss forming by its decay any portion of the peat in South America.  With respect to the northern limit at which the climate allows of that peculiar kind of slow decomposition which is necessary for its production, I believe that in Chiloe (lat. 41 deg. to 42 deg.), although there is much swampy ground, no well characterised peat occurs; but in the Chonos Islands, three degrees farther southward, we have seen that it is abundant.  On the eastern coast in La Plata (lat. 35 deg.) I was told by a Spanish resident, who had visited Ireland, that he had often sought for this substance, but had never been able to find any.  He showed me, as the nearest approach to it which he had discovered, a black peaty soil, so penetrated with roots as to allow of an extremely slow and imperfect combustion.”

The next stage in the making of coal is one in which the change has proceeded a long way from the starting-point. Lignite is the name which has been applied to a form of impure coal, which sometimes goes under the name of “brown coal.”  It is not a true coal, and is a very long way from that final stage to which it must attain ere it takes rank with the most valuable of earth’s products.  From the very commencement, an action has being going on which has caused the amount of the gaseous constituents to become less and less, and which has consequently caused the carbon remaining behind to occupy an increasingly large proportion of the whole mass.  So, when we arrive at the lignite stage, we find that a considerable quantity of volatile matter has already been parted with, and that the carbon, which in ordinary living wood is about 50 per cent. of the whole, has already increased to about 67 per cent.  In most lignites there is, as a rule, a comparatively large proportion of sulphur, and in such cases it is rendered useless