554 Prof. T. Rupert Jones — Some Central African Fossils. 



is 500 feet above the lake-level, and about a mile and a half from 

 the shore. I lit a good fire with it, which burned up strongly. 

 The coal softened and threw out gas bubbles, but gave no gas jets. 

 It caked slightly, but not so as to impede its burning. It is found 

 in the main gorge of the Chisindire valley," about six miles S. by E. 

 of Mount Waller. 



Visiting Mount Waller (op. cit. p. 265), Mr. J. Stewart found it 

 to consist of horizontal argillaceous and sandy beds, hard and soft, 

 for 900 feet upwards ; then three bands of coarse grit, standing out 

 along the mountain-side, form a ledge, at 1200 feet, 300 or 400 

 yards wide ; a precipitous mass of soft shales succeeds up to 

 2630 feet above the lake ; and then a cliff of hard compact 

 argillaceous rock, of a dull straw-colour, in beds 10 or more feet 

 thick, with intervening crumbling shales, reaches 3100 feet above 

 the lake (4700 feet above sea-level). 



Respecting the coal mentioned above, a footnote at p. 264 adds: — 

 " Having submitted a specimen of this coal to Mr. Carruthers, F.R.S., 

 Keeper of the Botanical Department, British Museum, this eminent 

 authority has sent me the following note of the results of his 

 examination of it: — 'The coal has the appearance of a good specimen 

 of English coal. The lines of stratification are indicated by films 

 of ... . mother-coal. The general form of the minute tissues are 

 preserved in the mother-coal, — I have observed fragments of sealari- 

 form vessels ; and in sections of the coal prepared for the micro- 

 scope I have found the macrospores of Lycopodiaceous plants, which 

 I cannot distinguish from similar bodies in the coal of England. 

 After combustion only 1-8 per cent, of ash remains. I have no 

 doubt that the specimen from Lake Nyassa is of the same age as the 

 coal of England.' " 



The hand-specimen of coal examined by Mr. Carruthers is 

 labelled — "Coal from Mt. Waller, Lake Nyassa. Livingstonia, 22 

 May, 1880, Jas. Stewart." Presumably the locality is not exactly 

 Mount Waller, but in its neighbourhood as defined above. It has 

 an irregular oblong shape, about 6 inches long, 3^ wide, and 

 3 thick ; and consists of close-set parallel laminse, some of dull, 

 compact, cannel-like coal, and some of bright, crackled glance-coal, 

 all irregular in their relative thicknesses, and seldom more than 

 a quarter of an inch thick. Mother-coal (dull, fibrous, black wood- 

 carbon) lies on an outer (uppermost) layer of the glance-coal, and 

 probably is present at intervals in the mass. 



Slices taken from the same block and prepared for the microscope 

 were sent to Mr. R Kidston, F.G.S., of Stirling, and he favoured me 

 with the following letter (dated January 27, 1890) : — 



" I have examined carefully the two slides of Coal from near 

 Lake Nyassa. . . . The slides sent would be classed under the descrip- 

 tive term of ' Spore-Coal,' in so far as spores (macrospores) enter 

 largely into the composition of the Nyassa specimen. 



'• Spore-coal generally occurs as bands of greater or less thickness 

 in the structureless bituminous matter. Not having seen the block 

 of coal from which the slides were taken, I cannot, of course, say 



