This excavation was composed of several hundred divisions of all sizes and shapes.

It might be called a hive with numberless ranges of cells, capriciously arranged, but a hive on a vast scale, and which, instead of bees, might have lodged all the ichthyosauri, megatheriums, and pterodactyles of the geological epoch.
A labyrinth of galleries, some higher than the most lofty cathedrals, others like cloisters, narrow and winding--these following a horizontal line, those on an incline or running obliquely in all directions--connected the caverns and allowed free communication between them.
The pillars sustaining the vaulted roofs, whose curves allowed of every style, the massive walls between the passages, the naves themselves in this layer of secondary formation, were composed of sandstone and schistous rocks.

But tightly packed between these useless strata ran valuable veins of coal, as if the black blood of this strange mine had circulated through their tangled network.

These fields extended forty miles north and south, and stretched even under the Caledonian Canal.

The importance of this bed could not be calculated until after soundings, but it would certainly surpass those of Cardiff and Newcastle.
We may add that the working of this mine would be singularly facilitated by the fantastic dispositions of the secondary earths; for by an unaccountable retreat of the mineral matter at the geological epoch, when the mass was solidifying, nature had already multiplied the galleries and tunnels of New Aberfoyle.
Yes, nature alone! It might at first have been supposed that some works abandoned for centuries had been discovered afresh.