existing in vegetable structures. 77 



skeleton of the plant, should remain, and serve as nuclei for 

 the deposition of saline or calcareous matter from the stream 

 that may flow over, or through them. Thus these depositions, 

 merely by supplying and filling up the vacuities formed by 

 the removal of the organic matter, at length produce a fossil 

 mass, in which the skeleton of the cellular and vascular tissue 

 remains the same, not only in form, but in matter, with that 

 which gave support to the vegetable when living ; the only 

 portion actually foreign to the original plant, being that which 

 has infiltrated between the delicate meshes of the inorganic 

 skeleton, where it has been deposited, and forms, of course, 

 the great mass of the fossil vegetable. 



Tn the coal formation, which was long merely suspected to 

 be of vegetable origin, we find beautiful and satisfactory evi- 

 dence of the existence of the same inorganic skeletons of the 

 tissues of plants, as those we have just been considering. — 

 For although the organic portion of these plants, by under- 

 going what has been, not unaptly, termed the bituminous fer- 

 mentation, has lost all traces of organization, yet we can find 

 fragments of the inorganic skeletons of tissue, mixed up with 

 the bituminous or carbonaceous mass : thus in the ashes of a 

 common coal fire, we may discover all the usual forms of or- 

 ganic structure, viz. cellular tissue, spiral vessels, annular 

 ducts, &c. And in such a perfect state of preservation are 

 these skeletons, that all the finest markings observed in the 

 recent structures, remain undisturbed : thus proving, beyond 

 the possibility of a doubt, the vegetable origin of our extensive 

 coal-fields. For this discovery of the skeletons of vegetable 

 tissues in coal, we are entirely indebted to the interesting 

 researches of the Rev. J. B. Reade, who is almost the only 

 phytologist in this country, who has devoted his time to this 

 no less curious than important department of vegetable phy- 

 siology. 



If it be granted that the skeleton of vegetable tissue is es- 

 sentially formed of inorganic matter, we have aright to expect 

 that if we attempt to cultivate plants in media from which all 

 traces of inorganic matter are carefully excluded, their deve- 

 lopement will be checked as completely as when we cease 

 to supply them with air or water. And this, from the expe- 

 riments of Jablonski, appears to be the case. This philoso- 

 pher planted various seeds in pure sublimed sulphur, taking 

 the precaution to supply them with water saturated with car- 

 bonic acid; after some time the cotyledons separated, but the 

 plumula did not become developed, and in a short time the 

 infant plants lingered and died. Jablonski then planted 

 seeds in the sublimed sulphur of commerce, which contained 



g 4 



