Notice on Fe ezetable Fossils. 873 
ranean passages, they always endeavour to avoid’ passing 
through the psammite, which would cause much expence 
without any profit to the miner; and itis these rocks which 
appear to contain the far greater number of the vertical 
stalks. These obstacles have much restricted the number 
of cases favourable to the discovery and to the complete and 
easy observation of those stalks ; but we are led by analogy 
to believe that, if urged on by the same motives of interest 
which induce the search for iron ore, those stalks would be 
found in the coal-grounds as commonly as the coal itself. 
Now if these stalks, still retaining their vertical position, 
announce that the coal-grounds of St. Etienne, Saarbruck, 
&c. have been formed and deposited in the places where 
these vegetables once lived and grew, we may, we ought 
even from analogy, to come to the same conclusion in rela- 
tion to the other coal-grounds. We must then no longer 
‘go to seek beneath the torrid zone for arborescentferns, nd 
all the vegetables of a tropical aspect that we find buried in 
the coal-grounds, and bring them into our latitudes by means 
of strong currents, or great commotions. This hypothesis, 
which is now almost entirely abandoned, is, as Mr. Nogge- 
rath has judiciously remarked, incompatible with a vertical 
arrangement so regular, so clear, and so uniform. 
Nevertheless, Mr. de Charpentier, i in the notice above ci- 
ted relative to the vertical trunk of a tree found at Walden- 
burgh, offered some very just remarks on the difficulty of im- 
agining that those stalks could have grown in such ground 
as that which now surrounds them, and that this earth could 
have been deposited amongst them during their growth, 
without partially destroying, overturning, or at least deran- 
ging them. He supposes that these vegetables, adhering to 
the Soil by large and deep roots, were removed, with the 
soil which supported them, and left in the places where we 
now see them. He supports this explanation by a circum- 
stance which fell under his observation on the breaking out 
of the waters of the lake of Bagne. In that terrible Catas- - 
trophe large trees with their roots were transplanted by the 
current, and deposited vertically in the plain of Martigny. 
This observation leads us to admit that the vertical position 
of a stalk is not a certain proof that it grew in the same 
place where we find it; but it appears to me that such ca- 
ses must be extremely rare, whereas instances of stalks be- 
