The Vailan or annular theory: A synopsis of Prof. I. N. Vail's argument in support of the claim that this Earth once possessed a Saturn-like system of rings

by Stephen Bowers

CONCLUSIONS REACHED.

The following conclusions are clearly deducible:

1. The Annular system was a region of microscopic life and infusorial forms. Coal being deposited by sea-water carried down with it marine forms, and others settled upon its surface.

2. The carbon deposits must have borne down a vast amount of marine vegetation and buried it upon the sea bottom. In swamp marshes the vegetation would have been entirely different.

3. When a carbon fall was borne to the seas and settled where limestone strata prevailed it would indicate great distance from the shore, and here the roof shales of the coal must be necessarily free from land fossils. Coal beds amongst sandstone strata indicate depositions near shore, and may contain land fossils.

4. The coal beds must be more heavily developed toward polar regions, and most free from impurities.

5. All carbon downfalls must have been attended by great cataclysms of snow, or water, or both.

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.