124 Plants of the Anthracite Formation of Savoy. 



having existed similar to that of the coal-measures at a geological 

 date long anterior to them. It would indeed be of the greatest geo- 

 logical importance to arrive at an insight into the kind of vegetation 

 that clothed the land, which furnished by its disintegration, abrasion, 

 and removal, by river and breaker action, into fitting places of de- 

 posit, those thick accumulations now known as the Silurian series. 

 We appear to have fair reason for concluding that, while the seas 

 swarmed with trilobites and molluscs, the dry land, supplying the 

 detritus amid which these i-emains were entombed, was not a desert 

 waste, a mere mass of rocks decomposing under the action of the 

 atmosphere, and worn away along the sea-level by the breakei's ; in 

 fact, nothing but a storehouse for the production of the marine sedi- 

 ments of the time. We require a marine vegetation as a base for 

 the existence of the sea animal life of the period ; and we may fairly 

 infer no lack of terrestrial vegetation flourishing beneath the atmo- 

 sphere at the same time. What that vegetation may have been we 

 have yet to learn ; but as the range of the Silurian deposits becomes 

 more known over the earth\s surface, in regions where they have 

 either never been covered by more modern deposits, or having been 

 so covered, are now bared by denudation, — and every day we learn 

 more and more of their distribution, — we may expect to obtain a 

 better insight into the kind of plants existing at that remote geolo- 

 gical period. 



2. Plants of the Anthracite Formation of Savoy. — Among the 

 labours of our Foreign Secretary, Mr Bunbury, during his late travels 

 on the continent, was included an examination of the fossil plants 

 from the anthracite formation of the Savoy Alps. The results of 

 this investigation he communicated to us in a memoir, in which he 

 not only describes the species of plants that came under his observa- 

 tion, but also gave us a history of the researches and opinions con- 

 nected with the mode of occurrence of these plants, adding general 

 views of his own. 



As you are aware, M. Elie de Beaumont was the first, in 1828, to 

 announce the fact, that near Petit Coeur in the Tarentaise, beds con- 

 taining an abundance of plants, of the same species as those disco- 

 vered in the coal-measures of the palaeozoic period, alternated with 

 other beds containing belemnites, and referred the whole to the 

 period of the lias. The plants were determined by M. Adolphe 

 Brongniart. Subsequently M. Elie de Beaumont published an ac- 

 count of beds occurring between Brianfon and St Jeane de Maurienne, 

 and included them in the same series. Plants obtained from these 

 rocks were examined by M. Adolphe Brongniart, and identified by 

 him with those of the coal-measures. From all the facts, M. Elie de 

 Beaumont inferred that the beds with belemnites and ammonites, 

 and those containing the plants, were parts of one whole, and that 

 whole referable to the date of the lias and part of the oolitic series. 



This announcement was stai-tiing to those who were accustomed to 



