They are all made up of the carboniferous limestone, so called, as your little knowledge of Latin ought to tell you, because it carries the coal; because the coalfields usually lie upon it.

It may be impossible in your eyes: but remember always that nothing is impossible with God.
But you said that the coal was made from plants and trees, and did plants and trees grow on this coral-reef?
That I cannot say.

Trees may have grown on the dry parts of the reef, as cocoa-nuts grow now in the Pacific.

But the coal was not laid down upon it till long afterwards, when it had gone through many and strange changes.

For all through the chine of England, and in a part of Ireland too, there lies upon the top of the limestone a hard gritty rock, in some places three thousand feet thick, which is commonly called "the mill-stone grit." And above that again the coal begins.