On Carboniferous Goal Seams. By Edward Wethered. 407 



(now Sir John Hawkshaw), in which he describes five trees which 

 had been discovered, standing as they grew, during the excavation 

 of the Manchester and Bolton Kail way. " The roots," Mr. Hawk- 

 shaw says, " are imbedded in a soft argillaceous shale, and in the 

 same plane with them is a bed of coal 8 or 10 inches thick. Just 

 above the covering of the roots, yet beneath the coal seam, so large 

 a quantity of Lepidostrobus variabilis were discovered, inclosed in 

 nodules of hard clay, that more than a bushel was collected around 

 the base of the tree." The trunks were \\holly enveloped by a 

 coating of friable coal, varying from i- to f of an inch in thick- 

 ness, but it crumbled away on removing the matrix. The trees 

 were doubtless Sigillariw, but if they were typical of the vegetation 

 which had formed the seam of coal, it is strange that the layer of 

 coal :|- to I of an inch thick, which enveloped the roots, should 

 have been of different material from the coal seam ; that it was 

 different is shown by the fact of its crumbling away. It is natural 

 to suppose that the layer which lay at the base of the trees repre- 

 sented their remains, and this is supported by the occurrence of 

 the Lepidosh'ohi, the fruit of the Sigillarise. In a second paper * 

 on the same subject Sir John Hawkshaw refers to the trees as 

 "standing on the same thin stratum of coal as those first dis- 

 covered." It is, therefore, not quite clear whether they extended 

 through the coal or grew on the top of the seam. 



The second paper t was by Mr. John Eddowes Bowman, F.L.S., 

 " On the character of the fossil trees lately discovered near Man- 

 chester on the line of the Manchester and Bolton Eailway, and on 

 the formation of coal by gradual subsidence." In this paper the 

 author supports the views shadowed forth by Sir John Hawk- 

 shaw, namely, that the trees grew where they were found, and 

 had not drifted into the position. He also refers to some dis- 

 covered towards the close of 1838 in driving the railway tunnel at 



Fig, 23. — Portion of fig. 17, showing spine-like projections on the surface, 

 X 262. 



Fig. 24. — Horizontal section of the lower bed of the Whitehill Colliery Splint 

 coal, X 12^. The spaces between the macrospores are filled with microspores 

 which are slightl)' more enlarged so as to make them visible. 



Figs. 25 and 26. — Macrospores from the middle bed of the Whitehill Colliery 

 Splint coal, x 22, 



Fig. 27. — A microspore from the middle bed of the same, x 262. 



Fig. 28, — Another spore from the same, x 22, 



Fig, 29. — Horizontal section of the middle bed of the Splint coal, x 12J, 



Fig. 30, — Horizontal section of the top bed of the Splint coal, x 12 J. 



Fig. 31. — Vertical section of the lowest bed of the Splint coal, bhowing a 

 bright layer between two dull ones, and that the spores are confined to the latter. 



* Proc, Geol. Soc, iii. p. 269, 

 t Ibid., p. 270. 



