188 THE MIcROSscoPE. 
Mr. Slade, in some interesting details, followed Mr. Newton 
in ridiculing the advice to soak pieces of coal in bicarbonate of 
potash as a means of getting at their contents, and described his 
own process of cutting a section some 2 inch in thickness, and 
then rubbing it down, as detailed by him some years since 
in Vol. II. of the Journal of the Queckett Microscopical Club. 
The incidence of geological denudation, as illustrated by 
the fragmentary survival of the British coal deposits, was dis- 
cussed at the instance of Mr. Stokes, the Hon. Secretary, the 
‘“‘ creat phantom of geological time” being invoked in explana- 
tion; zoological time in the same connection taking us back to 
the days of the labrynthodont and the earliest species of the 
still surviving duck-billed mole. 
Mr. Woodward pointed out that the nature of the spores in 
coal was first divined by the late Professor Morris. 
The company then inspected, through the microscope, a 
valuable series of transparent slices of coal, the material being 
selected from British coal-fields, and rubbed down to the requis- 
ite thinness by Mr. Newton and Mr. Slade. Imbedded in the 
dull and nearly black ground-substance were seen the bright 
wine-red discs known as macrospores; the microspores were 
seen to be of the same bright color, but much smaller, Mr. New- 
ton estimating them in one of his slides at an average of the 
seven-hundredth of an inch in diameter. For the most part 
they showed breaking up, and an increasing carbonization, but 
here and there the circular margin of the resinous coat was seen 
complete. Mr. Stokes showed two macrospores successfully 
extracted from coal. Mr. Wintour Gwinnell showed a beauti- 
ful suite of fossil stems, in which the highly decorative bark of 
lepidodendra, &ec., were well seen, including a piece which he 
had rescued from the domestic coal-scuttle. The host showed 
pebbles, inclosing ferns of the period, a large section of a ecal- 
amite, &c. At the next meeting Professor Stewart will deal 
with discoveries authorizing a new classification of the sponges. 
ExAMINING Iron AND SteEL.—Mr. F. L. Garrison, writing in 
the Journal Franklin Institute, considers it is at present diffi- 
cult to say what will be eventually the practical value of the 
microscope in the sciences of engineering. The réle which it 
