120 



nic matter, unable to find issue, has produced these inflated masses. There are 

 numberless faults in this coal-field to which no reference is made, it being stated 

 that much additional labour is required to give a complete history of them ; but 

 attention is called to the Birch Hill, Lanesfield, and Barrow Hill faults, which are 

 the principal transverse faults, and which the author conceives may be explained 

 upon the principles of the theory of Mr. Hopkins, or as cross fractures which 

 have resulted from elevation of the coal-field en masse. 



The memoir concludes with referring to the importance of one of the problems 

 to which the author has been directing public attention during the last few years, 

 viz., the probable extension of carboniferous tracts of the central counties beneath 

 the surrounding new red sandstone ; and he rejoices that the deductions which 

 necessarily follow from his observations in this and the adjacent coal-fields, have 

 recently been so ably supported by the masterly observations of Mr. Prestwich 

 upon Coalbrook Dale, with whose opinions he entirely coincides. 



The quantity, therefore, of unwrought coal beneath the new red sandstone of 

 Shropshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, &c, though previously omitted in sta- 

 tistical data, must form an element in all calculations concerning the probable 

 duration of the carboniferous wealth of the empire. 



NOTES OF A BOTANIST. 



Medicinal Plants applied to Vegetation. 



There is an expression used by Gardeners ; namely, that " plants draw up 

 plants," which would seem to indicate that plants do reciprocally affect each other, 

 and that the fact is admitted. A gentleman once told me that a choice exotic, 

 exposed sub die, flowered in winter, and though surprised by frost, suffered no 

 injury; but this resistance he attributed to a dose of brandy which he administer- 

 ed to the plant ! Be this as it may, there is one extraordinary fact which I have 

 verified by direct experiment : I had read somewhere of the sanative or healing 

 effects of Chamomile on some particular plants ; but I confess I treated the state- 

 ment as fanciful. The remarkable effects of the revivification of a plant, appa- 

 rently dying, by placing two small pots of Chamomile beneath its branches, and 

 pointed out to me in a gentleman's garden at Leicester, induced me to apply the 

 curious remedy to several plants, as China Roses, a shrubby Calceolaria and 



