CONIFEROUS WOOD. 223 



CONIFEROUS WOOD. 



The occurrence of coniferous wood of Wealden age has long 

 been known in the case of the so-called Pine-raft of Brook Point, 

 in the Isle of Wight. This seems to have been first observed by 

 Webster in 181 1, 1 and was afterwards described by Mantell in 

 1846 2 ; the latter writer compares the numerous coniferous trunks 

 and associated fossils, with the rafts of drifted trees carried 

 clown by the waters of the Mississippi. In addition to the 

 fossil wood, with its tissues more or less perfectly preserved in 

 carbonate of lime, there are numerous deposits of lignite at various 

 horizons in the Wealden strata, in which the lignitic material 

 obviously consists of the wood of coniferous trees. In the Medals 

 of Creation, Mantell writes : 3 "In the Wealden deposits of Sussex, 

 Kent, and Surrey, I have not observed a single fragment of 

 coniferous wood." More recently, in Dixon's Geology of Sussex, 

 we find that the occurrence of wood similar to that of the recent 

 genus Pinus is recorded, both in the form of brittle jet and as 

 mineralized fossil wood. 4 



In the British Museum Collection, there are several good 

 specimens of lignite in which the characters of coniferous wood 

 are clearly seen, and numerous examples of wood with the tissues 

 for the most part imperfectly preserved. 



By far the most perfectly preserved specimen of coniferous wood 

 is that previously mentioned as Pinites Ruffordi, sp. nov., and 

 which I hope to describe in detail elsewhere. In addition to 

 this, the following specimens may be mentioned : 



V. 701. Specimens of lignite, or perhaps more accurately de- 

 scribed as jet; the annual rings clearly seen at one end of the 

 large block. Hastings. Dawson Coll. 



V. 704. Lignite. Hastings. Dawson Coll. 



1 Bristow (A), Geol. I. Wight, pp. 6 and 252. 



2 Mantell (2), p. 92. 



3 Ibid. (1), vol. i. p. 165. 



4 Dixon (A.), p. 279. 



