1865.] On Fossil Plants from the Coal of Lancashire, $c. 327 



II. "A Description of some Fossil Plants, showing structure, found 

 in the Lower Coal-seams of Lancashire and Yorkshire." By 

 E. W. BINNEY, F.R.S. Received May 12, 1865. 



(Abstract.) 



The author stated that, although great attention has been devoted to the 

 collection of the fossil remains of plants with which our coal-fields abound, 

 the specimens are generally in very fragmentary and distorted conditions 

 as they occur imbedded in the rocks in which they are entombed ; but 

 when they have been removed, cut into shape, and trimmed, and are seen 

 in cabinets, they are in a far worse condition. This is as to their external 

 forms and characters. When we come to examine their internal structure, 

 and ascertain their true nature, we find still greater difficulties, from the 

 rarity of specimens displaying both the external form and the internal 

 structure of the original plant. It is often very difficult to decide which 

 is the outside, different parts of the stem dividing and exposing varied 

 surfaces which have been described as distinct genera of plants. 



The specimens described were collected by the author himself, and 

 taken out of the seams of coal, just as they occurred in the matrix in which 

 they were found imbedded, by his own hands. This has enabled him to 

 speak with certainty as to the condition and locality in which they were 

 met with. 



By the ingenuity of the late Mr. Nicol of Edinburgh, we were furnished 

 with a beautiful method of slicing specimens of fossil-wood so as to examine 

 their internal structure. The late Mr. Witham, assisted by Mr. Nicol, 

 first applied this successfully, and his work on the internal structure of 

 fossil vegetables was published in 1833. In describing his specimens, he 

 notices one which he designated Anabathra pulcherrima. This did not do 

 much more than afford evidence of the internal vascular cylinder arranged 

 in radiating series, somewhat similar to that described by Messrs. Lindley 

 and Hutton as occurring in Stiymaria faoides, in the third volume of the 

 Fossil Flora.' 



In 1839 M. Adolphe Brongniart published his truly valuable memoir, 

 " Observations sur la structure interieure du Siyillaria elegans comparee a 

 celle des Lepidodendron et des Stigmaria et a celle des vegetaux vivants," 

 in the Archives du Muse'um d'Histoire Naturelle. His specimen of 

 Sigillaria elegans was in very perfect preservation, and showed its external 

 characters and internal structure in every portion except the pith and 

 a broad part of the plant intervening betwixt the internal and external 

 radiating cylinders. Up to this time nothing had been seen at all to be 

 compared to M. Brongniart' s specimen, and no person could have been 

 better selected to describe and illustrate it. His memoir will always be 

 considered as one of the most valuable ever contributed on the fossil flora 

 of the Carboniferous period. 



