

V ON THE FORMATION OF COAL 143 



willow. The3 conical fruits, however, did not 

 produce seeds; but the leaves of which they 

 were composed bore upon their surfaces sacs full 

 of spores or sporangia, such as those one sees on 

 the under surface of a bracken lea Now, it is 

 these sporangia of the Lepidodendroid plant 

 Flemingites which were identified by Mr. Carruthers 

 with the free sporangia described by Professor 

 Morris, which are the same as the large sacs of 

 which I have spoken. And, more than this, 

 there is no doubt that the small sacs are the 

 spores, which were originally contained in the 

 sporangia. 



The living club-mosses are, for the most part, 

 insignificant and creeping herbs, which, super- 

 ficially, very closely resemble true mosses, and 

 none of them reach more than two or three feet 

 in height. But, in their essential structure, they 

 very closely resemble the earliest Lepidodendroid 

 trees of the coal : their stems and leaves are 

 similar ; so are their cones ; and no less like are 

 the sporangia and spores; while even in their 

 size, the spores of the Lepidodcndron and those of 

 the existing Lycopodium, or club-moss, very closely 

 approach one another. 



Thus, the singular conclusion is forced upon us, 

 that the greater and the smaller sacs of the 

 " Better-Bed " and other coals, in which the 

 primitive structure is well preserved, are simply 

 the sporangia and spores of certain plants, many 



