dl4 Miscellaneoits, 



nomenon of social plants occupying the ground almost exclusively (a 

 state of things which must have existed during the European coal 

 sera to a great extent) can here be easily studied, while in England we 

 have hardly more than two instances of social plants on a large scale, 

 viz. Calluna vulgaris and Zostera marina ; and of these only the 

 latter grows under coal-making conditions, and would, I suspect, 

 yield, when fossilized, just such ribands of carbonaceous matter as 

 we see in many of the carboniferous shales. I must not anticipate 

 too much, but I will only tell you that every time I go into the 

 marshes (through which I have been cutting a canal of several miles 

 in length) I see exemplifications of all sorts of coal-pheenomena, so 

 patent and evident as to make me feel almost clairvoyant for the last 

 hundred thousand years or so. The fossils of our coal-measures, of 

 which I possess about 200, comprise Murex, Dolium, Mitra, Pyrula^ 

 Scalaria, Magdus, CeiHthium, StrombuSy Natica, Avicula, Ilemi- 

 cardium, Solen, Psammobia?, several species of Crustacea and 

 Echinus, Flustra ?, a flustroid Sertularia, Caryophyllea, a Sponge, 

 teeth of fish (chiefly Squalidce, but very rare), a few scales, tooth of 

 a Diodon, tooth of a Sauroid fish. Interstratified with these beds, 

 which are frequently more or less calcareous, are shales with fossil 

 resin in several states, and Dicotyledonous leaves, generally very 

 imperfect ; no Ferns, Calamites, Lepidodendra^ and Stigmaria. I 

 am now writing a paper, and have made large collections of notes on 

 the coal-fields for the Society of Natural History at Batavia, of which 

 I am a member " — besides attending to his laborious duties as En- 

 gineer ! He employed a native collector of Natural History to 

 proceed into the interior, who preserved skins and the specimens 

 tolerably well ; but, as he remarks, " I know, of course, less of the 

 habits of the animals than I did of those at Labuan, where I collected 

 and preserved them myself: my man has just returned from the in- 

 terior after seven months' absence, and has brought me some novelties, 

 among the rest an enormous Oran Outan." In another letter he 

 he says, " I do not forget Leeds or the Museum of the Philosophical 

 Hall, which was my Alma Mater in what has always been the greatest 

 pleasure of my life — Natural History. I will send you a lot of 

 bird- skins, and some bottles of reptiles, and freshwater fish, fresh- 

 water and land shells, and an Ouran Outan if I can get one ; my 

 collector was in their district and got only two in two months. The 

 three species inhabit very distant localities in different directions. He 

 is now in pursuit of the small species ; and I do not expect him back 

 much before the end of the year. I hope he will bring me a fine 

 lot of water-birds, as he goes to a district of freshwater marshes. 

 I have commissioned him to get all the shells he can : half the land 

 shells of Borneo seem to be new.... The Cassowary is not here ; it is 

 said to be on the east coast, though I do not quite believe it ; there may 

 be one, but I am pretty certain, from the vague reports I have heard, 

 that it is not the common one at all events.... The Dugongs are rare 

 on this coast ; but I am also too far from the sea (1 6 miles of wilder- 

 ness by land, and a day at least by the river) to get many marine 

 specimens. I am, however, not sorry for this ; for, although I am 



