26 
Mrs. Mendham and Mr. Hemming (organist of St. Matthew’s 
church) who kindly gave their services on the occasion. The 
refreshments offered by the Club to their guests were satis- 
factorily supplied by Mr. Biddell, of High-street. 
December 21st, 1870.—*On somE VEGETABLE STRUCTURES RE- 
CENTLY DISCOVERED IN THE LOWER CoaL Breps at Hauirax, 
By Mr. W. Carrurners, F.L.8., or rHE British Museum. 
—Mr. Carrurners, referring to a visit to Halifax, in 
company with Mr. Lee and two other scientific friends, and 
to a large series of coal fossils found there, described the dif- 
ference between the calcareous concretions in the shale beds, 
locally known as ‘‘ bawmpots,” and the similar concretions in 
the coal itself, known as ‘‘coal-balls.” These balls were 
portions of the original. vegetables which had been seized by 
the infiltrated carbonate of lime before decomposition. They 
exhibited, therefore, the very materials of which the amorphous 
coal in which they occur was formed, so preserved as to 
enable one to determine their structure and affinities. He 
shortly described the great divisions of the vegetable king- 
doms ; and dwelt at length on the vascular cryptograms, to 
which section the plants of our coal-measures chiefly belong. 
The first group of these plants referred to were the ferns, 
represented in the flora of Britain by herbaceous forms, but 
which in warmer regions assumed the habit and size of trees. 
Ferns were remarkably abundant in the roof-shales of the 
coal seams, but hitherto very imperfect data for their systematic 
affinities had been obtained. The discoveries he was describing 
were therefore highly valuable and important. Mr. Carruthers 
next described the sporangia and spores found in the ‘ coal- 
balls,’ and shewed, by a comparison with recent ferns, that 
their affinities were with the filmy ferns. Only two species of 
true arborescent ferns had been detected in carboniferous 
strata; the species seemed to have been herbaceous, and 
either terrestrial or epiphytic. The recent horsetails were 
represented by an interesting group of arborescent plants— 
the Calamites ; but whilst the modern Equisetee were humble 
plants with hollow-jointed stems, and whorls of teeth for 
leaves, these had woody stems of considerable height and true 
leaves, but the fruits remarkably agreed in size and appearance 
with the ancient and modern ferns, even to the possession by 
the spores of hygrometric elaters. The difference, in fact, 
could not be considered as of more than generic importance. 
The “ club-mosses”’ of Britain were a group of low, generally 
creeping plants, belonging to two genera, the one characterised 
by having only one minute kind of spores called ‘‘ micro- 
spores,” and the other having these and very much larger 
