374 Scientific Intelligence — Geology. 



my respected coadjutor, proving the wide drifting of the amber l>y 

 floods in the districts round the Baltic, lose nothing of their value ; 

 and I can now only confirm their truth, from many observations 

 which I have either made personally in Silesia and the Lausitz, or 

 obtained from others.* In not one of the many brown coal-beds 

 opened in our province has amber ever occurred, but always in the 

 undoubted drift deposits (in rien aufgeschwemmtem Lande) above 

 them, generally very near the surface, in sand or loam pits with many 

 boulders, and, as very lately above the brown coal-bed at Schwiebus, 

 with fragments of friable wood, rounded on all the corners like drift- 

 wood, such as I never saw in our brown coal-deposits. The number 

 of localities in both provinces known to me at present, amounts to 

 ninety. I confine myself in these, as in all similar cases, entirely 

 to observations on which prejudice can have no influence, as I do not 

 consider myself qualified to decide on geognostic and geological ques- 

 tions ; but I entreat geologists not to neglect such observations, 

 especially at present, when there seems a disposition unconditionally 

 to recognise our brown coal-deposits as the native place of the amber. 

 I have only interfered with this question, so far as, from the exist- 

 ing materials, considered in a purely botanical point of view, I have 

 endeavoured to shew, what hitherto had not been done, that there 

 existed at least one amber-bearing tree ; and, at the same time, from 

 the other inclosed vegetable remains, to construct a picture of the 

 co-existing flora. A solution of the still unsettled problem of the 

 original repository of the amber, I leave to geologists ; almost the 

 whole of the specimens of the amber tree in my collection mentioned 

 above shew distinct traces of having been drifted. 



Continually occupied with the examination of the bituminous 

 wood found in the brown' coal-deposits of Northern Germany and 

 the Rhine, I shall annex to these observations a few of the results 

 obtained. 



(1.) Thepredominanceofconifera3 seems very remarkable. Among 

 300 specimens of bituminous wood collected in the Silesian brown 

 coal- deposits alone, only a very few other kinds of dicotyledonous 

 wood occur. This seems the more remarkable, since, in many places, 

 leaves of dicotyledonous trees, with deciduous foliage, have been 

 found in the clays of the brown coal-formation, and yet in the coal- 

 beds the trees on which we may supj)ose them to have grown are 

 wanting. This might be regarded as indicating a formation from 

 drift-wood ; but the following considerations are opposed to this view. 



In the brown coal-beds at Blumenthal, near Neisse, wood of de- 

 ciduous trees occurs, along with twigs and fruits of a Taxus and 

 Cupressinea ; amongst the trees only Taxus and Cupressinea, with 

 no trace of any other khid of dicotyledonous tree. This seems an 

 important fact, as perhaps leading to an explanation of this remark- 

 able phenomenon. I believe that during the process of maceration 



* Julius Miiller in der AUgem. Naturalist. Zeit. von Sachse, vol. i., 2 Heft. 



