26 British Association for the Advancement of Science. 
The oxidation of the lead is therefore, he concluded, obviously 
due to the oxygen of the air. 
Fossils with Coal.—Mr. Williamson explained drawings of sec- 
tions of the Lancashire coal district. He exhibited a number of 
beautiful drawings of organic remains, some of which are very 
singular; including vegetable fossils, and teeth of sauroid fish; but 
the most interesting were of fossil fish, which Mr. Williamson 
conceived to have a close resemblance to the recent salmon. In 
mentioning the coal strata of Wigan, he pointed out a remarkable _ 
seam of impure cannel under the Smith’s coal, which seam con- 
tains fresh-water shells. Some of his drawings represented Gro- 
niatites and Pecten papyraceus. He thought it very likely, along 
with some other geologists, that the different coal basins of Eng- 
land are parts of a great whole. He showed drawings of fish ~ 
scales found in the coal strata. ‘These have a close resemblance 
to the scales of recent fresh-water fish, and form an additional ar- 
gument in favor of the formation of coal beds originally in fresh- 
water lakes or estuaries—perhaps the latter, as he found also some 
shells, evidently marine. 
Mr. Sedgwick having stated that he would now receive the ob- 
servations of any one present upon these several papers on the coal 
strata, Mr. Phillips came forward, and spoke of the regularity of 
the fibrous structure of coal as forming an important cause of its 
cleavage—this regularity of cleavage enabling the practical miner 
to work it with more facility.—Sir Philip Egerton was requested 
by the President to give his opinion respecting the fish, supposed 
by Mr. Williamson to resemble the recent salmon; Sir Philip re- 
ferred to the arrangement of fish proposed by M. Agassiz, and to 
their geological distribution. The salmon is ranged by that emi- 
nent naturalist, under the division of Cycloidal fish, and remains 
of these have not been discovered in any system below that of 
the chalk. The fish delineated by Mr. Williamson might be re- 
ferred to the genus Colopticus, and the teeth to Diplodus gibbo- 
sus. Dr. W. Smith remarked, that the specimens of coal exhib- 
ited by Mr. Pease would point out a mode by which coals could be 
touched without dirtying the fingers—what are technically called 
the top and bottom being the soiling sides, but the cross cleft is 
». The President said, it was a thin layer of mineral char- 
coal that caused the soil soiling. 
ee 
