108 Fossil Vegetables. 
Art. XIV.—Fossil Vegetables. 
- Mr. Witham of Lartington, Yorkshire, England, (also of Edinburgh) 
has favored the scientific world with two very interesting memoirs on 
fossil vegetables. They evince great skill and care in developing the 
facts, and in illustrating them by the most beautiful colored sections, 
exhibiting the internal vegetable structure, which he has developed by 
a new method of examination by the microscope. 
By comparing the fossil specimens with those of recent vegetables, 
which also he has examined by the microscope, he thinks he can de- 
tect the true character and species of the fossil plant. Among many 
others, he describes a fossil tree, discovered in 1826 in a quarry 
near Edinburgh, which is a most curious and interesting fragment of 
an earlier world. It was found one hundred and thinrycais feet below 
the surface, in a horizontal position, nearly parallel with the stratum 
of sandstone in which it was imbedded, and measured thirty-six feet 
in height, and three feet in diameter at its base. This remnant of 
primitive vegetation appears to have been a conifera, and from com- 
paring the structure with the Norway Fir, and the Yew-tree, the re- 
semblance is surprising, and if not identical, may confidently be refer- 
red to that family. The cells and layers of the woody fibre are evident, 
although foreign substances have, by percolation, taken possession of the 
decaying part of the plant. In some parts, masses of crystals or other, 
mineral substances in patches and irregular streaks, have displaced 
the vegetable, but the whole is sufficiently entire to indicate its re- 
semblance to the living tree. The bark or rind was of a — sub- 
stance. 
Another fossil stem has been recently discovered in the quarry of 
Craigleith near Edinburgh, whose geological position is in the moun- 
tain limestone group, and considerably below the great coal basins of 
the Lothians. Its elevation is seventy-five feet above the level of the 
sea and its roots were at the bottom of the quarry. The length of 
the stem was forty-seven feet—a large, branchless trunk—in some 
parts, much flattened so as to afford an elliptical section. Its largest 
diameter is five feet by two, and its smallest, one foot and seven 
inches by one foot and four inches. It is obvious that many feet are 
gone from the top, whose spreading branches waved in the wind, 
ages ago, and probably at the height of sixty feet. The super- 
incumbent mass of rock appears to have been an hundred feet 
