AND OTHER VARIETIES OF COAL. 1 1 1 



In every part of the coal very evident fossil plants are 

 found. Some are in the shape of large trunks of trees, fluted 

 vertically on the surface, and one to two feet in diameter. 

 The most numerous are Stigmariae, of various sizes, flattened, 

 and sending off abundant rootlets into the mass. I do not 

 believe that a single fractured surface can be shown which 

 does not present portions of fossil plants, and these are in 

 every respect similar to those found in other coals, but far 

 more numerous than they. 



Every fractured surface likewise shows a number of an- 

 gular, flattened facets, on different planes from that of the 

 general surface of the fracture. These occur everywhere in 

 the bed. Not a cubic inch of the coal can be got without 

 them ; they, too, are impressions or portions of fossil plants. 

 When examined with a pocket-lens, or a low power of the 

 microscope, these suifaces, and the larger surfaces of the more 

 obvious fossils, present similar appearances, and show, over 

 spaces not unfrequently of many inches in extent, the scalari- 

 form tissue so abundant in ferns, or some closely allied vege- 

 table tissue. The vessels of this tissue present themselves 

 on their sides, and in various oblique and transverse sections 

 in the different parts. 



If it be borne in mind that a very large portion of the whole 

 bed of coal is made up of such easily recognisable vegetable 

 structures, and that 65 5 per cent, of the mass is carbon, I think 

 but little difficulty will be experienced in arriving at the c(m- 

 clusion that it owes its origin almost entirely to the vegetable 

 kingdom. 



Before leaving these fossils, it is to be carefully noticed 

 that it is only when the fractui-e has exposed them in a par- 

 ticular way that they are thus distinguished from the mass in 

 which they are imbedded. For the most part, the appear- 

 ances they present on any but their natural surfaces are exactly 

 those pi'esented by the mass. When a fossil stem is carefully 

 separated from the coal, and its surfaces are recognised as 

 natural faces presented by the plant, one is surprised to find 

 that the structure of thin sections made through it does not 

 differ from that of thin sections of the whole bed, except 

 where scalariform vessels appear. Now, there is no ground 

 for the belief that there ever was a plant containing scalari- 

 form vessels, of which the greater part was not composed of 

 a softer and cellular mass ; and there is just as little reason 

 for supposing that, where the shape of a plant and its scalari- 

 form vessels have been so perfectly preserved, there would be 

 no trace of its other structures. So, when it is shown that 

 there is a very remarkable ari'angement of the parts of these 



