TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 47 



"beautiful and interesting province of Kamtschatka," M. Errnan referred to his map 

 and to the specimens on the table. By these means he illustrated the tertiary and 

 perhaps cretaceous strata of the west coast ; the amygdaloid formation ; the chain of 

 the now spent volcanoes in the middle of the land ; and the magnificent rows of still 

 burning cones, and " elevation craters " formed by andisite (viz. albite and horn- 

 blende), interspersed with a few very remarkable fields of serpentine, clay slates, and 

 even granite, which seem to have been scarcely altered by volcanic action. 



On the Occurrence of Vegetable Remains, supposed to be Marine, in the New 

 Red Sandstone. By John S. Dawes. 

 The object of this paper is to communicate the fact, that vegetable remains, pro- 

 bably marine, occur in strata in which they have not, I believe, hitherto been no- 

 ticed. A new line of canal is now being formed between Birmingham and the col- 

 lieries near Tipton, through Gravelly Hill, Perry and Great Barr ; at the latter place 

 Silurian limestone has been found close to the surface, together with traces of coal 

 and other carboniferous measures, which appear to dip under the new red sandstone 

 on the Birmingham side of the axis, thus affording evidence in favour of a recently 

 expressed opinion, that the South Staffordshire coal-field will, in all probability, be 

 found to extend under that town. Not any organic remains characteristic of the 

 lower new red have yet been met with, although other vegetable impressions are 

 somewhat abundant, particularly in the deep cutting near to the old road from Bir- 

 mingham to Walsall ; the specimens, however, that have yet been examined, are 

 perhaps too imperfect to admit of any positive description ; some of them appear to 

 be fucoids, others possibly are of a higher organization ; they occur imbedded in 

 dark red, argillaceous, ripple-marked flagstones, and in the adjacent red and light 

 green-coloured marls, the whole being subordinate to a quartzose sandstone of con- 

 siderable thickness, containing calcareous conglomerates, identical in composition 

 with those found on the flanks of Clent, and which are understood to connect the 

 gres bigarre with the lower part of the saliferous system ; but as these Devonian- 

 looking beds can scarcely be supposed to belong to the latter division, they must, I 

 should conceive, be included with the overlying marls, sandstone and conglomerates, 

 thus constituting a more extensive equivalent of the magnesian limestone. Should 

 the fossil remains prove to be characteristic, a knowledge of them will materially as- 

 sist in the examination of this highly important series of rocks. 



On the Microscopic Structure of Coal. By John Phillips, F.R.S. 

 Mr. Phillips observed, that there was now no difference of opinion as to the vege- 

 table origin of coal, but only as regarded the circumstances under which those vege- 

 table masses were accumulated. In order to determine this, several modes of in- 

 vestigation might be followed, one of which was to examine the coal itself, in order 

 to ascertain the nature of the plants of which it was composed. In the microscopic 

 examination of polished slices of coal, by means of transmitted light, some results 

 had been obtained by Mr. Hutton of Newcastle ; these observations had not been 

 published, but he believed Mr. Hutton had detected a cellular structure in the sub- 

 stance of the Northumberland coal, which at first sight might be imagined of vege- 

 table origin, but from their size, form and distribution, were rather connected with 

 the development of gas in the process of chemical changes to which coal had been 

 subject; analogous cells exist in anthracite. It had been his intention to employ 

 some of the ingenious processes recommended by the Rev. J. Reade, who had dis- 

 covered the means of making fossil vegetable tissue apparent to the senses by a pro- 

 cess of combustion, but having lately observed something remarkable in the com- 

 bustion of Staffordshire coal, he was induced to examine it microscopically, without 

 waiting to adopt any more refined process. He observed that the ashes of wood 

 and peat differed in appearance and structure ; and this Staffordshire coal, which did 

 not cake, but burned to a white ash, resembled in its combustion sometimes wood, and 

 sometimes the laminated peat of the north of England, or the compact black peat of 

 Dartmoor. Upon examining these ashes, he found abundant traces of vegetable 

 structure, consisting of portions of woody tissue imbedded in other tissue, apparently 

 of plants much lower in their organization. He had also detected traces of vegetable 



