26 Bi^itish Association for the Advancement of Scie7ice. 



The oxidation of the lead is therefore, he concluded, obviously 

 due to the oxygen of the air. 



I^ossils with Coal. — Mr. Williamson explained drawings ctf sec- 

 tions of the Lancashire coal district. He exhibited a number of 

 beautiful drawings of organic remains, some of which are very 

 singular ; including vegetable fossils, and teeth of sauroid fish ; but 

 the most interesting were of fossil fish, which Mr. Williamson 

 conceived to have a close resemblance to the recent salmon. In 

 mentioning the coal strata of Wigan, he pointed out a remarkable 

 seam of impure cannel under the Smith's coal, which seam con- 

 tains fresh-water shells. Some of his drawings represented Go- 

 niatites and Pecten papyraceus. He thought it very likely, along 

 with some other geologists, that the difi'erent coal basins of Eng- 

 land are parts of a great whole. He showed drawings of fish 

 scales found in the coal strata. These have a close resemblance 

 to the scales of recent fresh-water fish, and form an additional ar- 

 gument in favor of the formation of coal beds originally in fresh- 

 water lakes or estuaries — perhaps the latter, as he found also some 

 ^ells, evidently marine. 



Mr. Sedgwick having stated that he would now receive the ob- 

 servations of any one present upon these several papers on the coal 

 strata, Mr. Phillips came forward, and spoke of the regularity of 

 the fibrous structure of coal as forming an important cause of its 

 cleavage — this regularity of cleavage enabling the practical miner 

 to work it with more facility. — Sir Philip Egerton was requested 

 by the President to give his opinion respecting the fish, supposed 

 by Mr. Williamson to resemble the recent salmon ; Sir Philip re- 

 ferred to the arrangement of fish proposed by M. Agassiz, and to 

 their geological distribution. The salmon is ranged by that emi- 

 nent naturalist, under the division of Cycloidal fish, and remains 

 of these have not been discovered in any system below that of 

 the challc The fish delineated by Mr. Williamson might be re- 

 ferred to the genus Colopticus, and the teeth to Diplodus gihho- 

 sus. Dr. W. Smith remarked, that the specimens of coal exhib- 

 ited by Mr. Pease would point out a mode by which coals could be 

 touched without dirtying the fingers — what are technically called 

 the top and bottom being the soiling sides, but the cross cleft is 

 £lean. The President said, it was a thin layer of mineral char- 

 coal that caused the soiling. 



