Mr Grieve on the Somersetshire Coal Formation. 95 



of some curious faults in the strata, called ' locally " overlap 

 vaults," by reason of which the same seam of coal is pierced 

 twice through vertically in the course of working. 



It was also observed that through the same disturbing 

 agency, seams of coal from being horizontal had become 

 vertical, appearing to have been tilted up much in the same 

 way as the seams called Edge Coals have been in our own 

 county of Midlotliian. 



Alluding to the antiquity of the coal workings in this 

 quarter, Mr Grieve said that in the neighbouring Mendip Hills 

 lead mining had been extensively carried on as early as the 

 reign of Edward IV., and that the working of coal in the 

 Radstock district was supposed to be coeval with that period. 

 He parenthetically suggested that it is perhaps not very 

 generally known that Dysart was the first place in Scotland 

 where coal was wrought, and about the very same time as in 

 Somersetshire, viz., four hundred years ago. Perhaps it was 

 not much later, if tradition be correct, that the monks of 

 Newbattle opened coalpits at Newmilns, a village near Dal- 

 keith, where traces of the old workings are still to be seen. 



The author then proceeded to give some account of the fossil 

 botany of the Eadstock coalfield. As regards this flora, he 

 remarked that it is simply exquisite. The gxeat abundance 

 of large acrogenous trees, such as Sigillarise, Lepidodendra, 

 lofty plumose arborescent ferns, and a variety of other crypto- 

 gamous plants of tender and beautiful form, proclaim this 

 carboniferous region to be perhaps the best type of a bygone 

 tropical vegetation which our island can produce. 



The specimens to be found here are abundant and excel- 

 lently illustrative of their kind, although some of them, 

 especially the Neuropteri, are perhaps somewhat rather frag- 

 mentary. The fossils are always found in a dark, heavy, 

 indurated clay, which becomes rapidly decomposed on ex- 

 posure to the weather. With very few exceptions, the re- 

 mains of the plants have perished, and casts only remain. 

 These casts, however, are generally of a very perfect descrip- 

 tion. The lineaments of the plants, more especially the form 

 and venation of the leaves, so important in regard to classi- 

 fication, are beautifully sharp and well-defined. Another 



