142 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
r:band-like leaflets converging into a short stem, so that the 
whole resembled a scourge of cords; and I would fain have 
detached it from the rock, but it lay on a mouldering film of 
clay, and broke up with my first attempt to remove it. A 
stalk of sea-grass weed pluck2d up by the roots, and com- 
pressed in a herbarium, would present a somewhat similar 
appearance. Among the impressions there occur irregularly 
shaped patches, reticulated into the semblance of polygonal 
meshes. They remind one of pieces of ill-woven lace ; for 
the meshes are unequal in size, and the polygons irregular. 
(See Plate XL, fig. 2.) When first laid open, every mesh is 
filled with a carbonaceous speck ; and from their supposed 
resemblance to the eggs of the frog, the workmen term them 
puddock spawn. They are supposed by Mr. Lyell to form 
the remains of the eggs of some gasteropodous mollusc of the 
period. Isaw one flagstone, in particular, so covered with 
these reticulated patches, and so abundant, besides, in vegeta- 
ble impressions of both the irregularly furrowed and grass- 
weed-looking class, that I could compare it to only the bottom 
of a ditch beside a hedge, matted with withered grass, 
strewed with blackened twigs of the hawthorn, and mottled 
with detached masses of the eggs of the frog.* All the larger 
vegetables are resolved into as pure a coal as the plants of 
the Coal Measures themselves—the kind of data, doubtless, 
on which unfortunate coal speculators have often earned dis- 
appointment at large expense. None of the vegetables 
themselves, however, in the least resemble those of the car- 
boniferous period. 
The animal remains, though less numerous, are more 
interesting. They are identical with those of the Den of 
Balruddery. Isaw, in the possession of the superintend- 
ent of the quarries, a well-preserved head of the Cephalas- 
* See Note I, Plate XII. 
