52 Mr Andrew Taylor on the Coal incrusting the 



Fig. -1. Cells from Liliuni pj/renaicum. 



a. Xucleus dividing, and containing several large 



nucleoli. 



b. Multinucleated cell, the two nuclei each containing 



several nucleoli. 

 Fig. 5. Cell from Lillum pyrenaicum. 



]S"ucleus dividing, and containing several nucleoli. 

 Fig. 6. Cell from Polygonatum mult iflor urn. 



^Nucleus very large, aud beginning to divide. 



XoTE. — It being of course often, indeed generall}', almost 

 impossible to find the same cell again, these figures were drawn 

 on the spot, most of them with a camera lucida (l^achet's), kindly 

 lent me by Professor Dickson. 



On the Coal incrusting the large Pinaceous Fossil Stems in 

 front of the Herbarium, Royal Botanic Garden, and 

 its hearings on the question of the Formation of CoaL 

 By Andrew Taylor. 



(Read 8th March 1883.) 



lu view of the great interest taken by visitors to the 

 Garden in these relics of a former vegetation, it msiy be 

 worth while to recall Sir Robert Christison's elaborate 

 researches into the fossilisation of these trunks, given at 

 great length in the Transactions of the Edinburgh Boyal 

 Society,"^ as well as in our own, in which he showed that 

 this coal did not represent the former bark of the trees 

 now fossilised. An hypothesis of the formation of this 

 coal on the trunk, as well as a thin seam found above the 

 former site iA the Redhall specimen, may be of far more 

 importance in the light of subsequent investigations than 

 the venerable author seemed disposed to assign it. 



In ail the trunks mineralogically examined, the encasing 

 material was a bituminous splint coal of a conchoidal frac- 

 ture, and burning with a dense white smoky flame. The 

 density of this coal in the Eedhall specimen is 1'284 ; 

 giving a hard coke, and leaving 2'95 per cent, of a pale 

 ochre ash, which shows traces? of iron to the action of nitric 

 acid. None of the coals from the various trunks examined 

 showed the uniformly vegetable structure demanded by 



* Trans. E. R. S., vol. xxxii. p. 203 ; Proc, vol. viii. p. 377. 



