TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 629 



facts aliout the spores and roots of the gigantic trees of which tlie humble 

 Selaginella, Isoetes, Sphagnum, and Equisetum are the living representatives. 

 Descriptions of their roots, trunks, leaves, woody and other structures have been 

 given to the world by both Foreign and British palffiobotanists in numerous goodly 

 memoirs and volumes, illustrated with excellent plates ; and the manj^ ferns, tree- 

 ferns, and cycadaceous plants (the last known by their fruits chiefly) have been well 

 described and figured. Ividston's ' Catalogue of the Carboniferous Plants in the 

 British Museum ' gives fall references to many of the above, and the others are 

 well known. W^th increased knowledge, the supposed dome-like, long-armed, 

 Stigmarian plants, with subaqueous leaves or processes, either floating on or in the 

 water, or growing on the mud, have become the depressed stools, dichotomous 

 roots, and innumerable long, narrow, leaf-shaped rootlets of Sigillaria and Lepido- 

 dendi-on. (Binney and others.) C. Grand'Eury, however, still distinguishes some 

 perfectly aquatic and peculiar plants, which floated in the water with their roots 

 trailing on the bottom ; and of Stigmaria he holds the opinion that it indicates a 

 formation in deep water, contrary (as he says) to what is generally stated.^ The 

 supposed palms have disappeared in the explanation that the supposed fruits are 

 only the marks of compressed gas bubbles fixed daring their escape from the foetid 

 black, decomposing mud." 



Great advances have been made by Prof, Dr. W. C. Williamson in the know- 

 ledge of the lycopodiaceous trees of the coal, which he shows to have partaken 

 of the exogenous structure of modern trees. 



Various more or less artistic representations of ideal coal-forests are to be met 

 with, both in special books treating of the subject and in treatises on geology in 

 general. Eloquent descriptions of such a forest by Ansted and Hugh Miller are 

 quoted by Balfour.' 



Of the flora of the Uplands, which were bordered by the peaty coal-swamps, 

 very little is known ; only that the fern fronds and some other plants in the roof 

 shales, and the occasional either prostrate or snag-like trunks of conifers in the 

 sandstones were probably brought to lower levels by streams or river-floods. 

 (Dawson, Lyell, and others.) 



II. The fossil animals of the coal are necessarily of very gi'eat interest, but 

 we can now refer to only a few. 



1. Of the invertebrates a fair number occur in South Wales, but none of the 

 myriopods, spiders, scorpions, eurypterids, land shells, and other rare forms known 

 elsewhere have yet been met with. 



In the ' Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain,' &c., Iron-Ores, 

 &c., Part III., the late Mr. J. W. Salter very carefully classified and tabulated the 

 fossils found in the ' ironstone bands ' of South W'ales, describing and figuring the 

 most characteristic species. He hoped to have taken up the fossils of the coal 

 bands in like manner, but unfortunately the time never came. His observations, 

 at p. 220, on the importance of managers of collieries and others making very 

 careful collections of fossils, with notes on their exact beds, should even now 

 command attention. He notes as follows : — 



Black Band ; Anthracomya, Fish remains .... Brackish 



Soap Vein ; Worm-burrows, Anthracomya, Ferns . . . Brackish 



Black Pins ; Anthracosia, Dadoxylon, Knorria, and Halonia . Brackish 

 Ell Balls, above Elled Coal ; Asterophyllites, Lepidodendron, 



and Ulodendron, Ferns ....... Brackish 



Under Big-vein Coal ; Anthracosia Brackish 



Over Three-quarter Coal ; Anthracomya .... Brackish 

 Will Shone, or Pin Will Shone, over the Bydyllog Coal; 



Athyris . . Marine 



Darran Pins ; Anthracosia, Anthracomya, Myalina . Brackish 



Over Engine Coal ; Spirifer and Productus, Fern . . . Marine 



' Mem. presenUs, ^-c, Acad. Sciences, ^-c, France, vol. xxiv., No. 1, 1877; and 

 Annates des Mines, sir. 8, M6moires, vol. i., 1882, p. 16.1. 

 » Carruthers, Geol. Mag., 1870, p. 215. 

 ' Palamit. Botany, pp. 70, 71. 



