390 Ancieni Sarcophagus, from Dr. J. W. Webster. 



reed-like vegetables have been found, sometimes lying along 

 in the stone, and sometimes standing erect therein ; the in- 

 side hollow of the vegetable being now completely filled 

 with sandstone, in all respects like that which surrounds it, 

 and the vegetable case or sheath is found converted into 

 perfect coal f' on the outside of which coaly case or sheath, 

 the papilia or places where very numerous large leaves 

 were once attached to the vegetable, are in general visible ; 

 and not uncommonly, particularly in the medium and 

 smaller sizes of these reed-like remains, the leaves are yet 

 attached and in a coaly state, and spread out into the sand- 

 stone on every side : it is seldom that these remains are 

 quite round, but mostly somewhat oval ; particularly to- 

 wards the bottom, where they usually swell out into an ir- 

 regular club-like form, much more resembling the lower 

 parts of coralline and other aquatic stems, than the com- 

 mencement of the roots of a tree, or of any land plant ; no 

 branches have ever been observed, proceeding from the 

 sides or the tops of these remains ; but it is very common 

 to observe the smaller and medium sizes of them, to ter- 

 minate at top in a large bud, very closely resembling the 

 top of an asparagus shoot in the state the same are brought 

 to market. In a free sandstone quarry on the western side 

 of Glasgow, a large organic remain has lately been found, 

 which in every essential particular seems to agree with the 

 description above mentioned." 



54. Ancient Sarcophagus. (J. W. W.) 



Dr. E. D. Clarke has communicated to the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Society a discovery which he had made re- 

 specting the supposed alabaster soros, brought by Mr. Bel- 

 zoni from Upper Egypt ; and which he had found to con- 

 sist of one integral mass of arragonite. — Ibid. 



* " It seems more than probablCj that hollow vegetable pipes contributed 

 greatly to supply the masses of which the coal-seams are now composed ; 

 because, on the tops of many coal-seams of inferior quality, and where much 

 earthy matter is found mixed with the bad coal, such pipy vegetables, near- 

 ly or quite collapsed, and converted into coal, very much abound ; the pa- 

 pilia, and sometimes the leaves also, being visible on the outsides of such 

 collapsed pipes, or flattened reeds as they are very commonly called. In 

 the process of forming good or perfect coal, a crystal ization of the vegetablf 

 mass has taken place, by which all traces of organization are obliterated.'" 



