114 Miss E. Hodgson — On the Water Blain Iron-ore. 



It is withm this " distance of two miles " that Water Blain is 

 situated. Again : — " At Water Blain the limestone is cut through 

 by a fault, marked by a narrow marshy valley, beyond which the 

 limestone is contorted, and traversed by thick veins of red oxide of 

 iron." Mention is also made of the limestone being "partially 

 altered, and penetrated by flakes of serpentine." See a paper by 

 Prof. Sedgwick, " On the Classification of the Fossiliferous Slates of 

 Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire," read before the Geol. 

 Soc. London, 1846. 



The following particulars relating to the fossils, kindly furnished 

 by Mr. Ezekiel Dawson, manager of the mines, have now been more 

 than a year in my possession, and I am unwilling they should any 

 longer remain unpublished, as I think they may render the subject 

 more intelligible to the minds of those who have demurred at the 

 announcement of fossil trees being found in the older rocks. They 

 were communicated, partly in conversation and partly by corre- 

 spondence, and they are, I believe, faithful records of the facts. 



It was in the early part of the year 1866 that this interesting 

 discovery was made. A large fossiliferous mass, or tree-trunk, was 

 met with standing erect in a cleft or cavity of the limestone, resting 

 upon, and surmounted by, horizontal beds of what Mr. Binney calls 

 ironstone. The depth of the cleft from the surface was about 20 ft., 

 having a capping, over the mineral, of drift — the Boulder-clay of 

 the country. The width of the cleft might be 50 ft. by 36 ft. 

 ■ The fossil, as near as could be remembered, had stood from 12 to 

 1 5 ft. high ; its diameter, at base, being from 20 in. to 2 ft. It was 

 branchless, and without any observable ramifying roots — " very 

 like" (Mr. Dawson said, on its being shown to him) "the figure 

 given by Mantell, from Lindley and Hutton, of Sigillaria pachyderma" 

 — Wonders of Geology, sixth edition, vol. ii. p. 719, Lign. 161 — 

 " the top of the fossil making the beds of ore overlying it assume a 

 convex form, thus" : — 



From a sketch by Mr. E. Dawson. 



while they were also observed to have sloped up towards it, on all 

 sides, at a gentle angle from a distance of two or three feet through- 

 out its depth. As the miners came upon the tree at two levels, I 

 •was anxious to learn whether any bark-markings had presented 

 themselves; but while it was admitted that, roughly, there might 

 have been some resemblance to certain bark structures, yet it must 

 mainly be described as having had " a coarse sparry crust, with 

 vertical ' pipes ' running through it." The miner's language is 

 capable, no doubt, of translation by the botanist. 



A block from this trunk, identified as such by Mr. Dawson, with 

 two smaller specimens of the same, selected by himself, and handed 

 to me with the remark that they were " very like wood," are now in 

 the possession of Mr. Binney. 



