1901) MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 207 
MICRO-ORGANISMS IN CoAL BEDs.—A rich source of fos- 
sil micro-organisms is the various Paleozoic flints that oc- 
cur in certain coal basins and other deposits. It was from 
such that Brongniart described so many remarkable seeds 
and fruits of Carboniferous plants, chiefly from the basin 
of Saint-Etienne. They contain all manner of vegetable 
tissues, and M. Renault finds these permeated with bac- 
teria and fungi. The silica has preserved everything with 
great exactness and the illustrations of microscopic or- 
ganisms in this matrix are much clearer than those from 
the fossil combustibles. Some of these are older than the 
coal measures and are found in the Culm and even in the © 
Devonian, as those of the Cypridine schists of Saalsfield, 
in which silicified remains of Cordaioxylon are affected 
by a Micrococcus (M. devonicus). At Estnost, near Autun, 
the roots of a Lepidodendron have the eggs of an insect 
or arthropod.—Popular Science News. 
Rep Rain.—Captain C. J. Gray, collected a small quan- 
tity of material after a heavy fall of rain on December 
28, 1896, in Melbourne, Australia. I have had the ma- 
terial mounted, but the quantity which I received did not 
contain the variety of matter that some other correspon- 
dents have noted. Observed by transmitted light, there 
were few characteristic particles, but with the aid a po- 
lariscope I was able to detect some small crystalline frag- 
ments of the nature of quartz, etc. Itseems more than 
probable that the phenomenon arose in consequence of 
one of those heavy winds which have been known to car- 
ry dust from the Sahara as great a distance as 500 miles, 
and which in this case may have passed over some sandy 
tract in a like manner. The material has all the appear- 
ance of such dust. There are some interesting references 
to falls of red rain in P. H. Gosse’s ‘‘Romance of Natural 
History,’ but none of them are of the same nature as the 
dust at present under consideration. 
