414 



Transactions of /he Sucie/ij. 



Coal " seam from ^^'llitellill Colliery, near Kdiubiirgli. For 

 specimens of the seam I am indebted to Mr. James Bennie and to 

 the owners of the colliery. The followincj is a section of the seam 

 as sent me by Mr. John Begg, to which 1 have added my notes. 



The Splint coal as worked at Whitehill colliery has three dis- 

 tinct beds, not, however, separated by partings, as is the case 

 with the Four-Feet and Shallow seams. Microscopic sections 

 of the lowest bed showed the dull lustrous portion to be a mass of 

 macrospores and microspores and fragments of spore-cases ; a hori- 

 zontal section is shown in fig. 24, plate IX., and the spores are 

 shown by figs. 17 to 22. No sign of tissue has been, so far, 

 detected. The bright layers were composed of hydrocarbon. 

 In order to test the question as to whether spores do enter 

 into the composition of the bright layer, a vertical section was 

 cut which intersected a bright layer between two dull ones. 

 On placing it under the Microscope, spores were seen to be numerous 

 in the dull portion, but not one was found in the bright layer : a 

 portion of this slide is shown in fig. 31. I do not, however, 

 mean to assert that spores are not to be found in the bright layers 

 of coal, but they seem to me foreign to them. 



There appears to be more than one variety of macrospore and 

 microspore represented in this lower bed of Splint coal. The 

 largest variety of macrospore is represented in fig. 17, and 

 measures • 047 of an inch in diameter. The largest variety of 

 microspores are shown in fig. 18, and measure 0"0015 of an inch 

 in diameter. 13oth of these seem to be identical with those in the 

 laminated coal of the Better Bed and Shallow Seam. In fig. 19 

 another variety of macrospore is shown measuring • 01 of an inch in 

 diameter, and in which the outer edge of the wall is scalloped. In 

 fig. 20 a smaller variety of microspore is shown, and in fig. 21 two 



