Recmt and Fossil Coii'ifercB. \55 



fossil Pinites Eggensis, and assert that it differs essentially from 

 any of the coal Coniferae. Their observations must have been 

 confined to the few fossil trees that have been found in the 

 vicinity of Newcastle. These, as far as I have seen, are all 

 destitute of annual layers, and in that respect they certainly 

 differ from the Eigg fossil ; but I have examined specimens, in 

 the possession of Professor Jameson, from the coal formation 

 of New Holland, so closely resembling that from Eigg, that 

 few could have distinguished the one from the other. 



In Professor Jameson's- collection there are specimens from 

 the coal formation of Nova Scotia in America, one of which is 

 a fossil Conifera displaying all the charactersof the moat perfect 

 recent American pines. In the transverse section, the annual 

 layers are well defined, the reticulated texture large and perfect, 

 and in the longitudinal section parallel to a radius, discs occur 

 both in single and double rows. These as usual are in some 

 parts very obscure, but in other parts they are very distinct. 

 In size the discs are about as large as those in Pinus canaden- 

 sis. They are circular, and some of them display at the circum- 

 ference two concentric rings, and one ring near the centre. In 

 the double rows, as in the recent pines, the discs are placed side 

 by side ; and indeed, in all its characters, this fossil bears a 

 greater resemblance to some of the recent pines than any thing 

 of the kind that has hitherto fallen into my hands. 



Many other particulars relating to fossil Coniferae might have 

 been adduced, but these I reserve for some future communica- 

 tion, and shall at present rest satisfied with briefly stating, as a 

 general conclusion from what I have hitherto observed, that all 

 the fossils retaining the ligneous structure in the coal and lias 

 formations, are of coniferous origin, and that, with one except 

 tion, those in the tertian/ formations are either monocotyledons 

 or dicotyledons. I have examined upwards of a hundred spe- 

 cimens of fossil wood, from the tertiary formation of the island 

 of Antigua, and also several from a similar formation in the 

 island of Java, in the possession of Professor Jameson, without 

 finding a single Conifera among them. The specimens from 

 Antigua were chiefly dicotyledons, the rest monocotyledons. 

 Those from Java were all dicotyledons, and tiie exception to 

 this distribution occurs in the tertiary formation of the isle of 



