182 EVIDENCE OF THE FOSSIL FLORA. 



goodliest productions. It is, however, not a fact that they 

 were the highest vegetable forms of their time. True exo- 

 genous trees also existed in great numbers, and of vast size. 

 In various localities in the coal-fields of both England and 

 Scotland, — such as Lennel Braes and Allan Bank in Ber- 

 wickshire, High-Heworth, Fellon, Gateshead, and Wideopen, 

 near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and in quari'ies to the west of the 

 city- of Durham, — the most abundant fossils of the system are 

 its true woods. In the quarry of Craigleith, near Edinburgh, 

 three huge trunks have been laid open during the last twenty 

 years, within the space of about a hundred and fifty yaras, 

 and two equally massy trunks, within half that space, in the 

 neighbouring quarry of Granton, — all low in the Coal Mea- 

 sures. They lie diagonally athwart the strata, at an angle 

 of about thirty, with the nether and weightier portion of 

 their boles below, like snags in the Mississippi ; and we infer, 

 from their general direction, that the stream to which they 

 reclined must have flowed from nearly north-east to south- 

 west The current was probably that of a noble river, which 

 reflected on its broad bosom the shadow of many a stately 

 tree. With the exception of one of the Granton specimens, 

 which still retains its strong-kneed roots, they are all mere 

 portions of trees, rounded at both ends, as if by attrition or 

 decay ; and yet one of these portions measures about six feet 

 in diameter by sixty-one feet in length ; another four feet in 

 diameter by seventy feet in length ; and the others, of various 

 thickness, but all bulky enough to equal the masts of large 

 vessels, ranged in length from thirty-six to forty-seven feet. 

 It seems strange to one who derives his supply of domestic 

 fuel from the Dalkeith and Falkirk coal-fields, that the Car- 

 boniferous flora could ever have been described as devoid of 

 trees. I can scarce take up a piece of coal from beside my 

 study fire without detecting in it fragments of carbonized 

 wood, which almost always exhibit the characteristic longi- 



