779 



through which the Sheffield railway passes, and the river which 

 waters it is the principal source of the Mersey. In the sides of the 

 hills are numerous quarries for stone, and it was to one of these that 

 I was conducted, which had not been worked for many years. 



About ten feet from the ground, lying in a horizontal position, in 

 the face of the quarry, was what appeared to be the trunk of a fossil 

 tree, a few feet in length, and its impression on the rock some dis- 

 tance farther : from the place where the fossil had been broken off 

 grew a branch, eight or ten feet long, with foliage near the rock and 

 at the extremity. I climbed up to the place, and found that the 

 branch sprang from between the fossil tree and the rock, and appear- 

 ed quite firmly planted. The fossil itself was a mere infiltration of 

 sand filling up the cavity left by some decayed tree : the markings 

 on the rock where the tree had lain were very indefinite. Of the liv- 

 ing branch I could make nothing ; the foliage was that of a heath, 

 but the size did not favour the idea : I gathered a few sprigs, and 

 sent them to several friends : the E-ev. W. A. Leighton sent me word 

 that he considered it to be Erica arborea, a species I had never seen. 

 Since then the place has been visited by a number of pseudo-geolo- 

 gists, who cut down the branch without remorse, and I feared quite 

 destroyed it, but have lately learned that it has begun to spring 

 again, and that the proprietor of the quarry strictly preserves it from 

 further depredations. 



Joseph Sidebotham. 



Manchester, February 15th, 1847. 



Note on the Death of Mr. Riley, of Papplewick, and on his Collec- 

 tion of Ferns. 



The name of Mr. Riley, of Papplewick, has long been familiar to 

 botanists in this country. Without making any attempt to laud Mr. 

 Riley's botanical attainments, of which I know but little,* I may 

 venture to describe him as an ardent admirer, an assiduous collec- 

 tor, and a most successful cultivator of the beautiful tribe of ferns. I 

 believe that he spared neither trouble nor expense in pursuing this 

 his favourite study. 



It is not perhaps so generally known that Mr. Riley died suddenly 



* I believe Mr. Eiley's published papers are a ' List of Ferns ' and a Paper at- 

 tempting to divide Cyslopteris fragilis into a number of species. 



