370 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [DeC. 



as proved by its mode of occurrence, and illustrated by my own 

 extensive series of observations on the coals of Nova Scotia and 

 Cape Breton, including the series of eighty-one seams exposed at 

 the South Jospins, the whole of which I have examined in situ 

 and under the microscope. 



The occurrence of bodies supposed to be spore-cases in coal, is, 

 as Prof. Huxley states, no new discovery ; but in reality these 

 may be said to be the first organisms recognized by any micros- 

 copic observer of coal — that is, if all the clear spots and annular 

 bodies seen in slices of coal are really spore-cases. They were 

 noticed by Morris as early as 1836, and they had been observed 

 and described long before by Fleming in Scotland. Goeppert 

 mentioned and fio-ured them in his " Treatise on Coal" in 1848. 

 Balfour described them in 1859 as occurring in Scottish coals, and 

 Quekett figured them in his account of the Toibane Hill mineral 

 in the same year. In 18-45 the latter microscopist showed me in 

 London slices exhibiting round bodies of this kind, very similar 

 to those now described by Huxley ; but at that time I regarded 

 them as concretionary, though Prof. Quekett was disposed to con- 

 sider them organic. Mr. Carruthers has summed up most of 

 these facts in his account of his genus Flemingites in the Geo- 

 logical Magazine for October, 1865. The subject has also 

 attracted the attention of microscopists in connection with the 

 Tasmanite, or "White Coal" of Tasmania, which consists in great 

 part of spore-cases of Ferns. 



I suppose that the oldest spore-cases known are those described 

 by Hooker from the Ludlow formation of the Upper Silurian ; 

 but these, if really spore-cases, are difi"erent in structure from 

 those ordinarily found in the coal-formation, more especially in 

 the great thickness of their walls, and I am not aware that they 

 have anywhere been found in considerable quantities. 



The oldest bed of spore-cases known to me, is that at Kettle 

 Point, Lake Huron. It is a bed of brown bituminous shale, 

 burning with much flame, and under a lens is seen to be studded 

 with flattened disc-like bodies scarcely more than a hundredth of 

 an inch in diameter, which under the microscope are seen to be 

 spore-cases, slightly papillate externally, and with a point of 

 attachment on one side and a slit more or less elongated and gap- 

 ing on the other, figs. 1, 2, 3, I have proposed for these bodies 

 the name Sporangites Huronensis. When slices of the rock are 

 made, its substance is seen to be filled with these bodies, which, 



