106 Mr. Gourlie on the Fossil Plants in the Glasgow Geological Museum. 



appointed to make a collection of the minerals, rocks, and organic 

 remains of the west of Scotland. Through their exertions, and with 

 the kind and zealous co-operation of many noblemen and gentlemen 

 connected with the mining districts, a collection was formed, which in 

 point of geological interest has not been equalled at any meeting of 

 the Association, and which was a source of much gratification to M. 

 Agassiz, Mr. Murchison, Sir H. T. De la Beche, Mr. Lyell, and the other 

 distinguished geologists who honoured this city with a visit on that 

 occasion. Although a part of that temporary museum was merely 

 lent by various local collectors, by far the greater part remains in the 

 possession of the committee appointed to take charge of it, at a meeting 

 held in April, 1841, for concluding the transactions connected with 

 the meeting of the British Association. 



In the mean time, the collection is stored in rooms rented from the 

 Andersonian Institution, and is only partially laid out, as the Com- 

 mittee have not considered it expedient to attempt the formation of a 

 Geological museum, on a scale worthy of the city of Glasgow, until the 

 recurrence of more propitious times. Having had the pleasure of 

 assisting Dr. Scouler in the arrangement of the museum of 1840, and 

 been since associated with my friend Dr. Colquhoun in carefully pre- 

 serving the specimens, I have drawn up a short notice of the vegetable 

 remains in the collection, a department which is attractive not only to 

 the scientific student of nature, but also to the popular enquirer, and 

 which, I trust, will not be altogether uninteresting to the Society. 



These organic remains consist of plants, fishes, shells, and zoophytes. 

 For obvious reasons, they are chiefly from the limestones, shales, and 

 sandstones of the carboniferous group of rocks, which extend upwards 

 from the old to the new red sandstone, and include the mountain lime- 

 stone, abounding in shells and corals, — the millstone grit, which occurs 

 principally in South Wales and Yorkshire, but which is often absent, — 

 and the coal measures, which are absolutely packed with the remains 

 of extinct genera o/ plants, molluscous animals and fishes. 



These coal measures, again, consist of a vast series of marine and 

 fresh-water limestones, sandstones, beds of coal of various thickness 

 and quality, indurated clay, ironstones, all the varieties of which arc 

 carbonate of protoxide of iron, and soft argillaceous beds, which being 

 of a slatcy structure, are generally called shales. The series above 

 enumerated is frequently repeated, — in some coal fields reaching a 

 thickness which has been estimated at nearly 6000 feet. Mr. Murray 

 of Monkland has found the whole thickness in the Lanarkshire coal field 

 to be at least 357 fathoms, or 2142 feet, as detailed in an interesting 

 section, which he communicated to the Society at the conclusion of 

 this paper. 



The following is a brief notice of some of the genera of fossil plants 

 which were amply illustrated by specimens from the collection, a cata- 

 logue of which is given at the end of this paper: — 



