114 Scientific Intelligence. 



This coal field, which is about tvventv miles long from north fo south 

 and from four to twelve in breadth from east to west, is situated twelve 

 miles west of Richmond in Virginia, in the midst of a granitic region. 

 The rocks consisting of quartzose grits, sandstones, and shales, pre- 

 cisely agree in character with the ordinary coal measures of Europe. 

 Several rich seams of bituminous coal (the principal one being occa- 

 sionally from thirty to forty feet thick) occur in the lower division of 

 the strata, which are arranged in a trough and are much disturbed and 

 dislocated on the margin of the basin, where they have a steep dip, 

 while they are horizontal towards the centre. 



The fossil plants which have been determined by Mr. Charles Bun- 

 bury, differ specifically, and most of them generically, from those 

 found fossil in the older or paleozoic coal formation of Europe and 

 North America, and resemble, as Prof. W. B. Rogers first truly re- 

 marked in 1840, the plants of the oolite of Whitby in Yorkshire, some 

 few however being allied to fossils of the European trias. 



From the upright position of the Calamites and Equisete Mr. Lyell 

 infers that the vegetables which produced the coal grew on the spots 

 where the coal is now found, and that the strata were formed during 

 the continued subsidence and repeated submergence of this part of Vir- 

 ginia. The shells consist of countless individuals of a species of Pos- 

 sidonomva, much resembling P. minuta of the English trias. The 

 fossil fish are homocercal and differ from those previously found in the 

 new red sandstone (trias?) of the United States. Two of them be- 

 long to a new genus and one to a Tetragonolepis, and they are con- 

 sidered by Prof. Agassiz and Sir P. Egerton to indicate the liassic 

 period. 



The analysis of the coal made by Dr. Percy and Mr. Henry, shows 

 that it contains the same elements, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and ni- 

 trogen, in the same proportions as the older bituminous coafof Europe 

 and North America. Alternating layers of crystalline coal, and others 



like charcoal, are observed in many places, and in the charcoal, Dr. 



Hooker has detected vegetable structure not of Ferns or Zamites or any 

 conifer, but perhaps of Calamites. The coal yields abundance of gas 

 used for lighting the streets of New York and Philadelphia, and some 

 fatal explosions have taken place in the mines, some of which are nine 

 hundred feet deep. 



Volcanic rocks (dikes and beds of intrusive greenstone) intersect the 

 coal measures in several places, hardening the shale and altering the 

 associated coal, the latter being in some places turned into a coke used 

 largely for furnaces. 



The author concludes by expressing his opinion that the evidence of 

 the fossils, although some of them belong to forms usually found in 

 the trias, preponderates upon the whole in favor of regarding the coal 

 field of the James river as being of the age of the inferior*oolite and lias.* 



A paper was next read, entitled, " Descriptions of Fossil Plants 

 from the Coal Field near Richmond, Virginia :" by Charles J. F- 



Btwbury, F.L.S., F.G.S. 



* F ,°^ theniom °irof Prof. Wra. B. Rogers, in which this conclusion was * 



iqTa ,oL the same ar guments in 1842, see Report Assoc. Amer. Geo!, and IW-i 

 1840-1342, p. 298. r 



