29 



It is, however, only since my return from India that I have been so 

 fortunate as to obtain good specimens, and for these I am indebted 

 to my friend Mr. Binney of Manchester, who has himself thrown 

 much light upon the vegetation of the coal epoch, and whose exer- 

 tions indeed have alone enabled me to prosecute the subject ; since 

 he has not only placed his whole collection of Trigonocarpons at my 

 disposal, but has shared with me the trouble and expense of their 

 preparation for study. All the specimens were found imbedded in 

 a very tough and hard black-band or clay ironstone, full of frag- 

 ments of vegetable matter, and which appears originally to have 

 been a fine tenacious clay. 



The individual Trigonocarpons are exposed by breaking this rock, 

 and are invariably so intimately adherent to the matrix as to be 

 fractured with it. A great many of these lumps of ironstone, con- 

 taining partially exposed Trigonocarpons, have been sliced by a lapi- 

 dary in the usual manner, and excessively thin sections taken on 

 slips of glass. The sections were made necessarily very much at 

 random, but as nearly as possible parallel, or at right angles to the 

 long diameter of the fruit. Five of the specimens thus operated 

 upon have proved instructive, presenting the same appearances, and 

 all being intelligible, and referable to one highly developed type of 

 plants. As, however, the term highly developed may appear ambi- 

 guous, especially with reference to a higher or lower degree in the 

 scale of vegetable life, I may mention that by this term I mean to 

 imply that there are in the fruit of Trigonocarpon extensive modifi- 

 cations of elementary organs, for the purpose of their adaptation to 

 special functions, and that these modifications are as great, and the 

 adaptation as special, as any to be found amongst analogous fruits 

 in the existing vegetable world. 



Thus, I find that the integuments of the fruit of Trigonocarpon are 

 each of them a special highly organized structure ; they are modifica- 

 tions of the several coats of one ovule, and indeed of the same num- 

 ber of integuments as now prevail in the ovules of living plants. 



The number, structure and superposition of these, are strongly 

 indicative of the Trigonocarpons having belonged to that large sec- 

 tion of existing coniferous plants, which bear fleshy, solitary fruits, 

 and not cones ; and they so strongly resemble the various parts of the 

 fruit of the Chinese genus Salisburia, that, in the present state of our 



