lately discovered near St. Helen's. 167 



Steinhauer's remarks in vol. i. p.106 of their Fossil Flora, come 

 to the following conclusions: — 1st. That the Stigmaria was a 

 prostrate land plant, the branches of which radiated regularly 

 from a common centre, and finally became forked; 2nd, that 

 it was a succulent plant; 3rd, that it was a dicotyledonous 

 plant; 4th, that the tubercles on the stem are the places from 

 which the leaves have fallen; 5th, that the leaves were succu- 

 lent and cylindrical. These authors, in their introductory 

 chapter of the second volume of their work, after stating that 

 they had seen two very perfect specimens found in the roof of 

 the Bensham seam of the Jarrow colliery, state that the centre 

 of the plant was a continuous homogeneous cup or dome, and 

 not the remains of the arms squeezed into a single mass, as 

 they had formerly surmised it might be ; and also that it was 

 not, as they before supposed, a land plant, but that it grew in 

 soft mud, most likely of still and shallow water, as they had 

 found its remains associated with an undescribed species of 

 Unio. 



In the year 1839, in company with the Rev. Robert Wal- 

 lace, F.G.S. and Mr. Atkinson, I examined some upright spe- 

 cimens of the stems of Sigillaria reniformis found resting upon 

 a small seam of coal exposed in cutting the tunnel at Clay 

 Cross, on the North Midland Railway near Chesterfield. I 

 there distinctly traced a Stigmaria to the lower part of a Sigil- 

 laria; not being able positively to prove the absolute insertion 

 of one plant into the other, I was not able to pronounce with 

 certainty that they were portions of the same tree, but I was 

 convinced that Messrs. Lindley and Hutton had been mis- 

 taken in supposing that the Stigmaria was a domed or cup- 

 shaped plant, and that it had no upright stem. Accordingly, 

 in my paper read by me in 1840 on the Fossil Fishes of the 

 Pendleton Coal-field, at p. 178 in the first volume of the Trans- 

 actions of the Manchester Geological Society, I state that the 

 Stigmaria grew in water on rich mud, in a bay like the recent 

 mangrove of the tropics at the mouth of the Niger in the Brass 

 country. For the last four years I have examined a great 

 number of upright Sigillariae for the express purpose of acqui- 

 ring a correct knowledge of their roots. 



Many practical colliers having seen upright stems of Sigil- 

 larias with part of their roots on small seams of coal only eight 

 to twelve inches in thickness, the floors of which were full of 

 root-like Stigmariae, very naturally concluded that the latter 

 were the roots of the former. M. Adolphe Brongniart has 

 lately announced that he supposed the Stigmaria would turn 

 out to be the root of the Sigillaria, from the great similarity in 

 their internal structure. Some geologists have also made si- 



