328 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



the most skilful herbalist vainly attempts to imitate. Or, again, an 

 incoherent cliff on the banks of the Medway, undermined by its a(% 

 tion, has slid into the water, and behold ! the face of the dissevered 

 mass of clay is hung with clusters of fossil fruit, of which the cele- 

 brated tertiary beds of Sheppey are so prolific. The date of Africa, 

 the cocoa-nut of the tropical islands, the bactris of America, the 

 areca of Asia, and a hundred species of aromatic and other inter-tro- 

 pical fruits are here seen with a semblance of reality which, like the 

 celebrated painting of Protagoras, might invite the birds to taste. 

 But we are about to penetrate into the dark recesses of the earth in 

 search of Coal Here is a vast homogeneous red rock, composed of 

 minute atoms of silicious matter, closely compact, and almost crys- 

 talline, through which to pass : though deposited slowly and with- 

 out violence, it has enclosed no relic of the vegetation the Jlora or 

 the sylva, of an adjacent continent or island, from the waste of 

 which its mass is derived. Here and there a group of vegetable 

 forms is met with ; but they are " few and far between," like oases 

 in the sands of Egypt. The red sandstone is, indeed, a great Saha- 

 ra in Geology — it is a blank in Nature's fossil Herbarium. Having 

 traversed this, by a sudden transition we arrive at the coal forma- 

 tion — a mass of consolidated mud, vegetable debris, and oceanic 

 land, of an extent and aggregate thickness which almost exceeds be- 

 lief, yet throughout regular in its alternations, uniform in charac- 

 ter, and rich in fossil treasures, every layer enclosing some relic, 

 more or less perfect, of a vegetation to be sought now in more geni- 

 al climes. Here our herbarium is truly rich indeed. Lastly, we 

 visit the slate quarries, or the limestone rocks adjacent, which be- 

 long to the transition period in Geology ; and here misshapen vege- 

 table forms, to which the eye is not accustomed, attract attention 

 and invite speculation. They are the Algce and the Ftici — the ve- 

 getation of the " hoary deep." 



" The dark illimitable ocean without bound," 



whose heated and turbid waters at this early period were replete 

 with organized forms resembling those now existing in the equato- 

 rial seas. This is the last page in our hortus siccus ; but the rapid 

 glance we have taken of its contents will hardly suffice to render 

 intelligible and interesting the facts which the specimens under re- 

 view elucidate. 



It is to three distinguished naturalists, pursuing simultaneously 

 their labours in this novel domain of science in different countries, 

 that we owe the rapid advancement of our knowledge on the subject 

 of fossil Botany — Adolphe Brongniart in France, Count Steinberg 

 in Germany, and Professor Lindley in England. Each succeeding 

 publication of the respective authors embodies some fact unknown 

 before, and exhibits occasionally some phenomenon at variance with 

 the pre-existing theory, and upon minor points the authors some- 

 times differ in their conclusions : but this is a leading generaliza- 



