SIGILLARIA. 353 



podiacese and Coniferae. Together with these, there occur 

 other groups of Plants unknown in modern vegetation, and 

 of which the duration seems to have been Umited to the 

 Epochs of the Transition Period. Among the largest and 

 tallest of these unknown forms of Plants, we find collossal 

 Trunks of many species, which M. Ad. Brongniart has 

 designated by the name of Sigillaria. These are dispersed 

 throughout the sand-stones and shales that accompany the 

 Coal, and can occasionally be detected in the Coal itself, to 

 the substance of which they have largely contributed by their 

 remains. They are sometimes seen in an erect position, 

 where views of the strata are afforded by clifls on the sea 

 shore, or by inland sections of quarries, banks of rivers, 

 &c.* 



* On the coast of Northumberland, at Creswell hall, and Newbiggin, near 

 Morpeth, many stems of Sigillaria may be seen, standing erect at right 

 angles to the planes of alternating strata of shale and sand-stone; they very 

 from ten to twenty feet in height, and from one to three feet in diameter, 

 and are usually truncated at their upper end; many terminate downwards in 

 a bulb-shaped enlargement, near the commencement of the roots, but no 

 roots remain attached to any of them. Mr. W. C. Trevelyan counted twenty 

 portions of such Trees, within the length of half a mile; all but four or five 

 of these were upright; the bark, which was seen when they were first unco- 

 vered, but soon fell off, was about half an inch in thickness, and entirely 

 converted into coal. Mr. Trevelyan observed four varieties of these stems, 

 and engraved a sketch of one of them in 1816, which is copied in Count 

 Sternberg's Table 7. Fig. 5. 



In September, 1834, I saw in one of the Coal Mines of Earl Fitzwilliam, 

 at Elsecar, near Rotherham, many large Trunks of Sigillaria, in the sides 

 of a gallery by which you walk into the mine, from the outcrop of a bed of 

 Coal about six feet thick. These stems were inclined in all directions, and 

 some of them nearly vertical. The interior of those whose inclination 

 exceeded 45" was filled with an indurated mixture of clay and sand; the 

 lower extremity of several rested on the upper surface of the bed of Coal. 

 None had any traces of Roots, nor could any one of them have grown in ita 

 present place. 



M. Alex. Brongniart has engraved a section at St. Etienne, in which 

 many similar stems are seen in an erect position, in sand-stone of the 



30* 



