Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 79 



large dimensions, perfectly distinguishable as originally organs of 

 fructification, but which cannot be identified with any now existing 

 in this country. The ferruginous fluid which flows in great abun- 

 dance through all the interstices of the stratum in which the fruits, 

 &c, are deposited, has converted all the above-named vegetable 

 and other substances into a substance of its own nature. Some of 

 the fossil fruits I have shown to several of the most eminent bota- 

 nists, chemists, mineralogists, &c, in London, who have (with but 

 one exception) unanimously pronounced them of the order of Car- 

 polithes, or fossil fruits and seeds ; and there exists little or no doubt 

 of their being natives of a tropical climate, or at least of a much 

 warmer climate than this country has probably ever enjoyed, during 

 the historical period. 



I am fully prepared to prove whatever I have here stated, and 

 shall feel great pleasure in submitting specimens of these fossils, &c, 

 to the inspection of the initiated ; and I flatter myself that every 

 unbiassed individual who examines them will allow that I have 

 effected something towards the opening of a new and extensive 

 field to the enterprising miner, which will at no distant day, by 

 the blessing of Providence, become not only an inestimable benefit 

 to this neighbourhood, where it is much required, but a new source 

 of common wealth and national prosperity. 



Coplow House, Jan. 17, 1833. Joseph Holdsworth. 



[An account of the discovery of coal in the district north-east of 

 Leicester, by Mr. F. Forster, will be found in Phil. Mag. and An- 

 nate, vol. v. p. 347. — Edit.] 



COHESION OF CAST IRON. 



Mr. Eaton Hodgkinson, whose valuable papers on Suspension 

 Bridges, and the Strength of Cast-iron Beams, were noticed in the 

 Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag. vol. i. p. 207, as published in the 

 Manchester Philosophical Memoirs, has lately been trying some 

 further experiments on the direct cohesion of cast-iron, which will 

 in a great measure remove the doubts that long subsisted on that 

 important point; proving that when cast-iron prisms are exposed to 

 transverse strains, the neutral line between the tensile and the com- 

 pressive resistance is not in the centre, according to the theory of 

 Mr. Tredgold ; and that the results of Capt. Brown and Mr. G. Ren- 

 nie's experiments, which limit the cohesive strength to about eight 

 tons to the square inch, are confirmed. The experiments were made 

 on a large scale, and with great care to preserve the resultant of the 

 straining force in the line of the centre of the transverse sections. 



B. B. 



