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LIGNITES. 321 wrought; and it abounds also at Soissons, Epernay, Laon, St. Paulet, and some other places in France. That of Annecy in Savoy, which is also wrought for coal, is referred to the same position : as is that of Putzburg and Lobsann, and that of Cologne, so well known and so often described. The principal deposit here, is thirty feet in thickness; and this locality is remarkable for its peculiar pulverulent lignite, so well known in painting. The immense deposits of Styria, and those found in the middle o{ the Alps, are supposed to occur chiefly in the sands of the plastic clay; yet some examples of this nature appear to belong to a purely fresh water or lacustral origin. Those which abound in certain parts of Germany, as near Cassel and Meissner, are con ceived to appertain to a formation of this nature, though lying in contact with the magnesian limestone; a situation, as I have formerly shown, not incompa tible with such a geological position. Those also which are found in the basin separating the Alps and the Jura, at Vernier, Paudex, Vevay, near the lake of Zurich, at Oeningen, and elsewhere, including all the steinkohles of Switzerland, appear to be the deposits of a fresh water lake in antient times, as might be in ferred from former remarks respecting this great lo cality. Those of Sheppey, the Isle of Wight, Sussex, and other analogous places in England, must, on the contrary, be referred to the marine deposit, the plastic clay. Thus the lignites above the chalk would admit of being divided in the manner which I formerly pro posed as to the tertiary deposits ; as they must be hereafter, when geologists shall have investigated these with more accuracy and discrimination. Having thus given such localities as seemed suffi cient for examples, or for indicating the general posi- VOL. II. Y