Tue Microscope. 187 
graded form made up the greater part of all the bituminous 
coals he had examined. The paper was a very valuable one 
for local purposes; but the attempt to get similar testimony 
elsewhere as to the construction of so world-wide a deposit as 
coal had failed so far as an application to Dr. Dawson, the 
author of “Acadian Geology,” was concerned; while the recent 
and persistent European researches of Herr Reinsch, as told in 
his Micro-Palzeophytologia, similarly showed the exceptional 
nature of Prof. Huxley’s evidence. The spores in English coal 
were doubtless an example of the survival of the fittest in the 
coal forests, the amorphous ground substance or matrix in 
which they lay representing perished structures. A discussion 
followed. 
Mr. KE. T. Newton regretted that anything should be said 
even in apparent disparagement of Prof. Huxley’s paper, which 
dealt with the data of its time in a masterly and truly scientific 
manner, and was a permanent contribution to our knowledge. 
It might seem astonishing that English coal should be so 
largely made up of spores, and people asked where could such 
an incredible deposit of these little organisms possibly come 
from, and what was the vegetation which yielded it. But the 
fact was incontrovertible; he could show his audience a 4ft. 
coal seam running for miles, and composed entirely of spores. 
No doubt, when the area of the coal forest was littered with the 
decaying vegetation, the more perishable tissues had been burnt 
up (oxydized) by aerial exposure, while the spores, with 
their resinous coats, had lasted long enough to be entombed 
and sealed up, not much the worse for wear, in the bed 
of the swamp. The purity of thick beds of coal told of the 
effectual “ screening” exercised by the vegetation of the period, 
which filtered the currents charged with sand and mud. Leices- 
tershire coal shows well both the “ macrospores” and “ micro- 
spores.” Ordinary house coal (Newcastle) seldom shows them. 
In Silkstone (Wharncliffe) the brown parts are made up of 
microspores. Dalkeith coal shows both kinds of spores. The 
difference between dull and lustrous coal was often due to the 
abundance of spores in the latter. Mr. Newton concluded with 
some of his experiments in preparing coal for microscopic ex- 
amination, 
