Miscellanies. 173 



Geology, asserts, lhat no vegetable impressions have ever been dis- 

 covered in .the anthracite, and I believe that most geologists are of 

 the same opinion. I have been so fortunate as to obtain from a small 

 quantity of Schuylkill coal, six specimens proving that trees were at 

 least present when the coal was formed, if vegetable matter is not 

 its materiel. The best specimen presents the longitudinal section 

 of a piece of wood, ten inches long and two inches broad. Another 

 specimen exhibits a similar section six inches long. A third con- , 

 tains a bit of wood one inch square and one tenth of an inch in thick- 

 ness, and this piece could be easily detached. Another specimen 

 exhibits a section of wood, from four to five inches long, and about 

 three inches in width. The grain of this piece resembles that of the 

 oak. A fifth contains a section four inches by three. The sixth is 

 the counterpart of the fifth ; the two pieces, being the parts of a 

 larger .specimen, the cleft of the coal dividing the wood equally and 

 similarly, leaving a portion in each division. These specimens ex- 

 hibit not impressions merely, but real wood, resembling charcoal, al- 

 though softer. In examining coal, I have often found indentations, 

 which, by the aid of imagination, could be magnified into vegetable 

 impressions ; but I never before found real wood. About the speci- 

 mens which I now possess, there can be but two suppositions. Either 

 this wood was introduced, in some incomprehensible mode, into the 

 heart of the solid mass of the coal, or else it is a remnant, not wholly 

 consolidated, of the material from which the coal was formed. I 

 believe that the latter supposition is more philosophical, and conse- 

 quently more reasonable, than the former. Very respectfully, sir, 



Your obedient servant, James Madison Bunker. 



The specimens of Mr. Bunker fully confirm his statements, as re- 

 gards the existence of large masses of ligneous fibre in the anthra- 

 cite of Pennsylvania. The structure is very palpable, and much 

 resembles that of the curled maple. Under the blowpipe, it burns 

 more readily than the anthracite — does not, like that, decrepitate, and 

 it exhales, at the same time, a peculiar odor. Every one has observ- 

 ed the appearance, on a small scale, of fibrous charcoal in the Penn- 

 sylvania anthracite, and the specimens now before us have evidently 

 resulted from the mineralization (more or less complete) of large por- 

 tions of wood. — Ed. 



2. Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. — Some o( the most 

 important interests of this company, as they stood in 1830, formed 

 the subject of an article in Vol. XIX of this Journal, p. 8. We are 



