126 Reviews— Binney' s Fossil Plants. 



II. — A Description of some Fossil Plants, showing Strttctuiie, 



FOUND IN THE LoWER CoAL-SEAMS OF LANCASHIRE AND YORK- 

 SHIRE. ByE.W.BiNNEY,r.E.S. Phil. Trans., 1865, pp.26, vi. tab. 



ADDED to his ardent devotion to the study of the vegetation of 

 the Coal Measures, Mr. Binney has the most abundant 

 opportunities of obtaining the best specimens, and examining these 

 in the localities where they occur. His delight is to collect with his 

 own hands the fossils from the beds that contain them. Wherever 

 a miner can crawl to his work Mr. Binney will follow, if it is to 

 add anything to his extensive acquaintance with the Carboniferous 

 Mora. To have such enthusiasm, and such opportunities, is a rare 

 combination, and one which should be productive of valuable results 

 to Science. That it has been so every geologist is aware ; and we 

 have now before us a further contribution to our knowledge in this 

 paper, extracted from the last part of the Philosophical Transactions. 

 In a paper recently published in our pages, ^ Mr. Carruthers 

 described some of the peculiar fruits belonging to the Carboniferous 

 vegetation, and Mr. Binney here figures and describes some stems 

 which exhibit a remarkable, and, indeed, anomalous, structure. He 

 confirms and adds to the observations of Witham, Brongniart, and 

 Corda. The specimens were found in calcareous nodules dispersed 

 throughout the seams of coal. They are referred to two species, 

 Diploxylon ctjcadoideum, Corda; and Sigillaria vascularis, Binney. 

 The Diploxylon is Witham's Anabathra pulclierrima, a name though 

 not very elegant, yet very characteristic of the tissue of which it is 

 chiefly composed, and which, according to the universally accepted 

 law of priority, should supersede the newer designation of Corda. 

 Mr. Binney's specimen, which is carefully figured by Fitch, exhibits 

 no true cellular structure. The centre or "pith" is composed of 

 what, in the cross section, looks like large cells, but the longitu- 

 dinal section (Plate xxx. fig. 5a, and Plate xxxiii. fig. la) shows 

 them to be true vessels with scalariform structure, as Mr. Binney 

 describes them. Scattered through this core are some vessels having 

 a smaller diameter, and well marked transverse bars, which the 

 author considers to be septa. The core is surrounded by a compact 

 cylinder of woody scalariform tissue. Bundles of vessels traverse 

 this cylinder, very gradually ascending in their progress outwards, 

 and evidently connected with the leaves borne on the surface of the 

 stem. We can see no evidence of the existence of any cellular 

 structure that can be called a medullary ray. Surrounding the 

 woody cylinder is a space represented on the plate as without struc- 

 ture, and described by Mr. Binney as "composed of large cellular 

 tissue, and traversed by vascular bundles, frequently disarrranged 

 or destroyed, and replaced by mineral matter." Outside of this 

 there is another cylinder of woody tissue, perforated by the vascular 

 bundles which have been traced through the inner woody cylinder 

 and the amorphous mass surrounding it, and which are now seen to 



1 Geological Magazine, Vol. II. p. 433, Plate XII. 



