OF JOHN EDDOWES BOWMAN, ESQ. 71 
such a mass from its compression and consolidation 
must undergo on its conversion into coal. 
The wider views of the Universe opened by 
geological speculation, did not however wholly 
withdraw his attention from the minute investiga- 
tions to which he had been early attached ; indeed, 
in the chain of his ideas, the minute and the vast 
were ever placed in an interesting and intelligible 
relation to each other. In November 1839, he 
read a paper before the Manchester Geological 
Society, ‘‘ On a white Fossil Powder found under 
a Peat Bog in Lincolnshire.’ * A quantity of 
this powder was given to him by Mr. E. W. Bin- 
ney, who had discovered it, with a request that he 
would examine it closely. Upon subjecting it to 
the scrutiny of the microscope, Mr. Bowman found 
that it consisted of the siliceous remains of fossi- 
lized Conferve, standing in the same relation to 
that class of plants, as the fossil remains discovered 
by Ehrenberg, to animalcule. Its magnified par- 
ticles exhibited the characters of crystallization, 
which he supposed to mark the earliest stage of 
* Manchester Geological Transactions, Vol. I. Art. vii. 
Prior to his own paper, Mr Bowman had read a Memoir on 
these Conferve, by Mr. E. W. Binney, at the British Asso- 
ciation in 1839. 
