On Fossil Vogetables traversing the beds of the 

 Coal Measures : by Alex. Brongniart, 

 Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, 



Ssc 



April, 1821. 

 (Annales des Mines, for 1821.) 



THE presence of organic remains in the midst of the solid 

 and deep beds of the crust of the globe is, in the natural 

 history of the earth, one of the circumstances most woithy 

 of stimulating the curiosity and attracting the attention of 

 observers. 



These remains of ancient worlds, often so numerous and 

 so little altered in their form or structure, though entirely 

 changed in nature, seem to have been so well preserved 

 solely in order to furnish us with the only documents we 

 could ever obtain on the natural history of these different 

 periods : they are as it were scattered phrases of that his- 

 tory. The more we collect them together, the more we may 

 hope to establish, if not entirely, at least in its principal 

 parts. The fact I am about to bring forward is not new ; 

 but the examples of this fact are still rare. It is besides so 

 remarkable, so important for the theory of the formation of 

 one of the rocks most interesting in every point of view, 

 that too many examples cannot be collected. 



That which is the subject of this notice is one of the most 

 complete, the clearest and easiest to prove ; it will there- 

 fore be one of the most authentic. I shall in this publica- 

 tion have no other merit, than that of having described and 



