106 Proceedings of the Roycd Physical Society. 



occurrences demonstrate that these animals lived and died 

 on land, and not in water.^ 



Description of Specimens. 

 Tkiletes, Eeinsch. 



THletece, Reinscli, Micro-Paleeo-Pliytologia Formationis Carboniferse, vol. i., 



p. 1, 1884. 

 Steliclece (including Sub-Tribes Trichostelium a.nd Stichostelium), Ibid., p. &7. 



Division I. — L^vigati. 



The outer surface of the macrospores of this division is 

 smooth — some having a polished appearance, others a very 

 slight granulation, though this is not quite so strongly 

 marked as on the surface of the spores of Selaginella Mar- 

 tensii, Spring (PL VI., Fig. 23), whose outer surface has a 

 great similarity to that of some of the fossils included in 

 this division. 



1 As the circumstances whicb led to tbe search for spores are not only inte- 

 resting, but instructive, they may be briefly related here. 



Incidentally the examination of the section at Niddrie, on the new Edin- 

 burgh Suburban Railway, led directly to the discovery of beds of coal and 

 fireclay from which spores could be got free in great numbers. In the extreme 

 east of this cutting the solid rocks give place to a thick bed of drift, consisting 

 of two beds of boulder clay — a lower and an upper — separated by eight or ten 

 feet of sand, suggesting an inter-glacial period. While examining this sand- 

 bed to determine if it gave any evidence of its supposed inter-glacial character, 

 a number of pieces of black earthy mud were found lying on the top of the 

 sand-bed, just under the upper bed of boulder clay. On the supposition that 

 this black earthy mud was the remains of a peat-bed similar to one lately 

 found in a like position in Redhall Quarry, portions were collected and 

 washed. On washing, it was found that the black mud was not a peat mud, 

 but scaly fireclay, and the black shining dots of carbon not recent seeds dyed 

 black, but spores from coal or fireclay. 



The source from which the fireclay had come was next sought, and as the 

 pieces of black material were loose in texture and but slightly coherent, it was 

 evident they could only have been carried a short distance. As the carry of 

 the ice which brought the boulder clay was proved to be from the west (from 

 the edges of the thin strata of shale and sandstone being bent back and folded 

 to the eastward, quite contrary to the natural inclination of these rocks), the 

 source of the fireclay was sought in that direction. Guided by these signs, 

 the place of the original bed was found among the first group of rocks to the 

 westward, in the fireclay described in Locality No. 23 (p. 98). 



Portions of the fireclay in situ were collected, and on being washed proved 



