194 DK. BENNETT, ON THE STRUCTURE OF 



that three, certainly two, of those examined by the defenders 

 are botanists also ; and I do not think that any of those ex- 

 amined for the pursuer, three of them from London, repre- 

 sented themselves as botanists. Now the defenders' witnesses 

 are accustomed to look for plants, and can understand them 

 when they see them. The gentlemen on the other side, again, 

 looking for woody fibre or tissue, are not, as I understand, 

 conversant or skilful in fossil plants."* 



Now, so far from the botanists seeing what the histologists 

 did not see, it is nowhere made to appear in their evidence 

 that they ever observed those rings on a transverse section, 

 which I have endeavoured to show are distinctive of true coal. 

 On the contrary, they contended that coal and the Torbanehill 

 mineral were similar in structure, the elements of the one 

 existing in the other, both containing vegetable cells ; that 

 the numerous yellow clear masses observed in the latter were 

 in point of fact such cells, and constituted the proof of vege- 

 table organization. 



I think it of great importance to rescue the mode of inves- 

 tigation by means of the microscope from all reproach in this 

 case, and to point out that the discrepancy which existed is 

 not one of fact, but one of inference, I hope then it will be 

 evident that the true scientifie controversy is altogether con- 

 nected with the question of whether these yellow masses, 

 which both parties saw, described, and figured, are or are not 

 vegetable cells. 



Now the view taken up by myself from the first, and which 

 was also taken up by Dr. Adams and Mr. Quekett, indepen- 

 dently of each other, was that they are not cells, but masses 

 of a concrete bituminoid or resinoid substance, imbedded in 

 earthy matter. We could nowhere discover in them any trace 

 of cell-wall or contents. Their mode of fracture was more 

 crystalline in its character than anything else ; they occurred 

 confusedly together, and nowhere presented that definite 

 arrangement to one another, or to ducts and woody tissue, 

 which exists in plants. Numbers of them present no envelope 

 or definite boundary, but are scattered through a substance 

 often more than two feet deep, extending for acres, and it may 

 be for miles. If these yellow masses be cells, what is their 

 origin? Tliey cannot come from the woody tissue of the 

 neighbouring coal, for, as we have endeavoured to show, such 

 coal is destitute of them. The rings in coal are much smaller 

 in diameter, are of regular size, and present the character of a 

 tube cut transversely. Such rings could never be confounded 

 with the yellow masses of the mineral. But supposing these 

 * Mr. Lycirs Kcpoit, pp. 238-9. 



