26 THE FLORA OF THE AMBOY CLAYS. 
The Sayreville beds, if not the first opened, were those most largely 
worked in the early history of the clay industry, and our first collections 
were made from this deposit. Dr. N. L. Britton, then my assistant in the 
geological department of the School of Mines, took a special interest in 
the subject, and brought in from the banks of the Raritan River a large 
amount of material which at first view was particularly attractive and 
interesting. The fossil plants were represented by a considerable amount 
of carbonaceous matter that was of a jet-black color, and this contrasted 
well with the dove-colored background of the damp clay, so that the leaves 
as they were taken out resembled strong and handsome lithographs. Mr. 
Arthur Hollick, a graduate of the School of Mines and a skillful draftsman, 
was on hand at that time to make sketches of some of this material, and it 
was fortunate that this was possible, because these beautiful plant impres- 
sions proved to be in many cases evanescent and temporary. The sheet of 
carbonaceous matter which covered the area of a leaf, having been her- 
metically sealed in the plastic clays, had lost little of its substance and 
was a relatively thick sheet of lignite. This contained a large quantity of 
water, and when the specimen was dry the material shrank and season- 
cracked so that it could often be blown away with the breath, leaving only 
a faint impression that was nearly invisible. Efforts were made to preserve 
these specimens by various devices. They were varnished, coated with 
gum, saturated with paraffin, with glycerin, with water glass, all without 
success, and we had the mortification of repeating the experience of the 
merchant whose story is told in the Arabian Nights, who, receiving what 
seemed beautiful new coins from a necromancer, found on going to his 
money drawer the next day that all his bright coins had resolved themselves 
into dried and withered leaves. 
The same thing had happened before, for the leaf impressions in the 
Amboy Clays had early attracted the attention of Professor Cook, at that 
time the head of the Geological Survey of the State, and he had caused 
many of them to be collected. When my attention was drawn to the sub- 
ject and I went to New Brunswick to examine the material that had been 
gathered into the cabinet of Rutgers College, I found that nearly all the 
specimens had perished in the way I have described and were inde- 
terminable. 
