76 Goppert 07? Fossil Plants, and on 



which, at least in Silesia, we find the ferns and other plants in 

 the grey wacke, and in the sandstone of the coal-formation ; and 

 in the numerous leaves of dicotyledons in the quader sandstone, 

 for the last also do not exist here as they generally do, in the 

 form of petrifactions, but only as impressions.* 



Although I have succeeded, by the assistance of fire, in ob- 

 taining vegetable products resembling fossils, still, I believe, 

 that their formation in nature has proceeded much more fre- 

 quently in the moist than in the dry way. I cannot at least 

 understand how otherwise, — (apart from the weighty grounds 

 adduced for this view by Reichenbach)f — we can adequately 

 account for their partial conversion into wood, coal, or stone, all 

 of which often alternate in layers with one another, in one and 

 the same mass. Even in the 16th century, Balthasar Klein 

 and Matthiolus J noticed this singular phenomena in a frag- 

 ment which had been converted partly into coal and partly into 

 lapis Jrmeniacus (probably clay-ironstone). More recently, 

 Professor Link§ has referred to this subject, and expressed the 

 opinion, that the formation of coal had probably taken place in 

 the same manner as the conversion of animal bodies into sper- 

 maceti ; a view at which Karsten arrived by the way of experi- 

 ment, in his excellent account of coal (Poggendorff, vol. xii. 

 p. 1., &c.). In order to obtain decisive conclusions on this sub- 

 ject, I have instituted a series of experiments, which, however, 

 cannot afford any result for a long time after I shall have been 

 enabled to return to them, at the tennination of my examina- 

 tion of the coals of Silesia. 



The vegetation preserved in brown coal often hardly deserves 

 any other term than that of dried vegetable matter ; and in fact 

 fossil wood often differs but little externally from wood which 

 has lain for a long period in water. 



The idea of petrifaction, then, belongs properly to a compara- 

 tively small number of the impressions of wood and stems which 

 we find in all formations, and still more abundantly in boulders at 



* I have not yet had an opportunity of examining, at the localities, how 

 tlie fucoids of the Jura formation occur. 



i" Poggendorff, vol. xxxi. p. -511. 



:j: A. Matthioli Epistolee, edit. Bauhin, vol. iii. p. 142. Lugduni Bat. 1564. 



§ Travels in Auvergne, by Legrand. Edited, with remarks and additions, 

 by H. F. Link, G ottingen, p. 83. 



