122 DR. REDFERN, ON THE TORBANEHILL 



sometimes of scarcely perceptible breadth. On their opposed 

 edoes the bands are smooth ; on their exterior, they are almost 

 uniformly tubercular or pilose. I believe that the various 

 appearances presented by such sections as those from which 

 fio-s. 5 and 6 were drawn, result from bodies of a similar kind, 

 presenting themselves in different aspects in horizontal and 

 vertical sections. That they are vegetable membranes I have 

 no doubt, and I believe that they are the remains of more or 

 less globular and membranous vesicles, studded externally 

 with tubercles or hairs, and nearly smooth within. Are they 

 spores ? Whatever they are, they increase the similarity 

 between the Torbanehill and other coals, for in the latter, in 

 house coals especially, they are very abundant. Very good 

 preparations of them may always be obtained from a thin 

 layer of house coal below the Parrot of Bathvale, west of 

 Boghead. 



7th. Occasionally patches of dark-brown fragments are 

 met with. They, 1 think, are such as appear fi-equently 

 in small detached portions in the dark matter of the coal. 

 One of the patches seems to be a portion of a vessel contain- 

 ino- a fibre ; if a fragment of a scalariform vessel, its colour 

 is totally different from that generally existing in that tissue 

 in the coal. Similar patches (as far as I can judge) occur 

 quite commonly in other coals. 



Sawdust and Powder. — When reduced to small fragments, 

 as in the form of sawdust or powder, the Torbanehill coal 

 separates in the position of the dark matter into rounded and 

 flattened yellow masses, surrounded by a dark outline, or into 

 groups of these masses. There are also numerous elongated 

 frao-ments, yellow, reddish-brown, and dark-brown in colour, 

 and rounded or angular in different instances. I believe all 

 these appearances to be the result of an accumulation of vege- 

 table membranes, cells, and fibres, which originally formed 

 the mass. At any rate, whether vegetable or not, tliere is no 

 essential difference in the microscopical appearances presented 

 by small fragments of this coal and those of the Methill and 

 Capledrae cannel coals. 



Cohe. — The coke of the Torbanehill coal is greyish, dis- 

 tinctly laminated, of the same bulk as the coal from which it 

 is formed, and of but little use as fuel, from its containing so 

 small a quantity of fixed carbon. When reduced to frag- 

 ments, and examined microscopically, the coke of the upper 

 layers of coal presents a number of irregulaiiy rounded black 

 masses, some of which have round or angular openings in 

 them. The coke of the lower layers presents a greater 

 number of elongated and angular fragments, such as might 



