220 HI. M. Cadell—Plant-remains in Basalt, Bo'ness. 
. Some new facts of considerable geological interest have since been 
elicited in the course of mining and quarrying operations in the 
district. Among these the most remarkable is perhaps the discovery 
of undoubted fragments of plants in some of the sheets of basalt 
interstratified with the Carboniferous beds. In my former paper 
I referred to the occurrence of coniferous wood in some of the ash 
beds and neck tuffs that belong to the old volcanoes of the 
Carboniferous Limestone Series of Linlithgowshire, but such plant- 
remains, although interesting, are not particularly remarkable or 
surprising im their mode of occurrence, as similar remains have 
been found elsewhere, and their origin is not at all difficult of 
explanation. 
The plant-remains I shall now briefly describe were found under 
much more unusual circumstances, and I may safely say that very 
few, if any, similar cases have been discovered in this country at 
least, in which the matrix surrounding the fossil consists of a 
crystalline massive volcanic rock. 
During the Summer of 1890 I had occasion, while carrying out some 
improvements at Cowdenhill, in the village of Grangepans, to remove 
part of a knoll of trap that forms a low cliff on the south side of the 
public road. The trap in question is the bed that lies in this part of 
the Bo’ness coalfield, about 30 feet above the seam known as the Red 
Coal. It dips westward from its outcrop at Cowdenhill, and has been 
pierced in No. 3 Pit of Grange Colliery about 80 yards further 
west, where it has a thickness of about 27 feet. That the rock is 
contemporaneous and not intrusive is clearly proved from the fact 
that (1) it has never been found to cut across the strata in the many 
sections where it has been laid bare; (2) the beds below are slightly 
indurated at places, while those above are unaltered; (3) the upper 
surface is highly amygdaloidal and usually somewhat decomposed. 
Where the excavation was made there is no means of ascertaining 
the distance from the top or bottom of the trap, but the rock is here 
quite solid and free from amygdules, and less decomposed than it 
usually is near the edges, so that the specimen to which I shall now 
refer was probably taken from near the centre of the old lava bed. 
_ When first it was brought to light 1 took it for some species of 
mineral concretion, but a little examination soon proved that this 
could not be the case, as it not only looked remarkably like a lyeopod 
stem, but was surrounded by a thin film of what appeared to be black 
carbonaceous matter. My friend Mr. R. Kidston, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., 
who kindly examined it and took the photograph which is reproduced 
in the accompanying plate (Pl. XIV), reports as follows :— 
‘“'The specimen, which is preserved in greenstone (basalt), is 
12 inches long. The upper extremity is about 1-4; inch in diameter, 
and owing to a fracture in the stone which contains the fossil the 
upper 3 inches are broken off and lift out of the matrix. In section 
the stem at this part is slightly compressed on one side. The lower 
extremity measures 2 inches in its greatest diameter, but it is also 
slightly compressed. About 4 inches from the base a branch has 
been given off on the left side of about equal size to the stem 
preserved, but only its truncated base is left to indicate its position. 
