( 373 ) 

 SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 



GEOLOGY. 



1. Contributions to the Flora of the Brown CoaUformation. By 

 Prof. Goppert. — In the year 1839, I examined some of the bitumi- 

 nous wood found in the brown coal-formation, in various districts of 

 Northern Germany,* and at that time described two species {Pinites 

 protolarix and Taxites Ayckii), which, from the width of their dis- 

 tribution, seemed to me peculiarly deserving of attention. More re- 

 cently, in the work published conjointly with Dr Berendt in Danzig, 

 on the vegetable remains found in amber, I collected a flora, com- 

 prising fifty-four species, which, in regard to the genera, could not 

 be distinguished from that of the brown coal ; although no brown 

 coal-beds, containing amber in its natural position, have yet been 

 certainly pointed out. The amber, which I formerly thought I had 

 discovered in the brown coal at Muskau is nothing more than Retin- 

 asphalt. I now possess a small stem covered with the bark, on 

 which the resinous exudation appears in drops, and many other fossil 

 coniferae, among them even taxinese, shew the same appearance, but 

 none of them, so far as I know, such an abundance of resin as the 

 small stems and the fragments of wood in my collection which pro- 

 duced the amber. These I have figured and described in the work 

 mentioned above, and they have been seen by a great number both 

 of German and foreign naturalists. At present, they must be re- 

 garded as the only remains which give us any certain knowledge of 

 the existence of at least one tree producing amber, although I have 

 no doubt that there were several. Dr Thomas, to whom I am in- 

 debted for many interesting contributions to my inquiries, having 

 chemically examined several remains of wood from the brown coal- 

 deposits of the Samland, and found succinic acid in them, considers 

 that these trees nmst also be added to those producing amber, and 

 that these deposits generally must be regarded as the place in which 

 this substance originates. I would, however, remark, that tiiis fact 

 alone cannot be considered as sufficient proof, since succinic acid oc- 

 curs as a product of oxidation of many kinds of wax or fats, in many 

 deposits of brown coal, and even in the resin of still existing coni- 

 ferae and several other plants, as in wormwood and lettuce. The 

 actual occurrence of amber in the wood or the layers of bark, can 

 alone prove decisive, and justify us in regarding a fossil as belonging 

 to a tree producing amber. But even were the original bed con- 

 taining the amber tree actually discovered on the coast of Prussia, 

 and that it may be so I have the less reason to doubt, from having 

 never visited the place myself ; still the numerous facts collected by 



* See a paper " On the Bituminous and Petrified Wood recently discovered in 

 the basaltic tufa of the high Sealbachkopfe near Siegen. with Remarks on the 

 Brown Coal-formation generally," in Karsten and \. Dechen'sArchiv, vol.xiv., 

 p. 182, &c. 



VOL. XLVI. NO. XCII. — APRIL 1849. 2 B 



