422 Scientific Intelligence. 
These tubes appear to have been formed around wood, that was 
brought down by a river, or rivers, perhaps through numerous mouths, 
and deposited after the tubes were formed, the wood at greater depths 
seems to have decomposed and passed off, and its place filled with 
various. colored sand ; that more elevated in its position, petrified, leav- 
ing us evidences by which to know the origin of the tubes. The 
sandstone was forming during this process, being thrown down at an 
angle of about 30°, as before stated, and in the same direction with 
the tubes, as if both were deposited by the-same current. The lowest 
strata contained no organic remains that I could discover ; the middle 
were inhabited by several species of shells ; the upper received depos- 
its of drift-wood. The age of this sandstone I am unable to deter- 
mine; I hope to have the opportunity soon of submitting my speci- 
mens to some’one well acquainted with fossils. 
The above facts are extracted from an article, read by me before 
the Nat. Hist. 2 at the Wesleyan University, upon this subject, 
nearly five years 
36. Fossil Dace in the Parkfield Colliery, near Wolverhampton.— 
In a seam of coal, seventy three trees were counted by Mr. H. Béckett, 
scattered over a quarter of an acre. The trunks occupy the whole 
thickness of the coal seam, about a foot anda half, but do not pass 
through the shale above. Above this upper shale, there were. remains 
of another forest, of similar character. One of the stumps examined 
was perfectly bituminized, and preserved its shape unflattened ; it was 
four feet in circumference, and the roots spread to a distance of nearly 
two feet. The trunk and roots were covered with a bark about half an 
inch thick, which was rather brittle ; the interior, two feet in diameter, 
was more earthy and concentrically lamellar. The. trees were all up- 
right, and are said by Mr. Beckett, to present undoubted evidence of 
having grown on the spot. 
r. Wm. Ick, describing the same region, states that some of the 
trees are eight feet in circumference, and seventy are exposed to view 
on one area, broken off near the roots, while the prostrate trunks are 
lying across each other in every direction. One of these trunks was 
thirty feet in length. In a thickness of twelve feet, he pean 
three beds of coal and remains of as many distinct forests. The trees 
d to be Conifers. 
WP Pig liites-<This-niinetal, whith; on publiabed Jt. penis aon 
ably identical with Ottrelite, was referred erroneously by Dr. Thom- 
son, who first described it, to Sterling, Mass., whereas it was found by 
Prof. L Vanuxem i in the “town of Newport, Rely where wee 1823) it 
abundantly in ‘ mica , in the stone walls of the enclo- 
Dr: esapgdereormmemect 
oe 
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