446 



Has, may lead us to a favourable anticipation of the success of his 

 forthcoming volumes, — and to hope that fossil ichthyology may here- 

 after serve our cause as efficiently as other branches of zoological 

 evidence. 



Fossil Plants. — The early experiments of Hall and Hatchett, am- 

 plified and illustrated by MacCulloch, had nearly produced conviction 

 that all the varieties of carbonaceous matter, from the ill-consolidated 

 surturbrand, through every stage of brown coal to pure jet ; and in our 

 older strata from anthracite to bituminous coal, were the products 

 of vegetables. Botanists have since corroborated the soundness of 

 these views, by developing the Flora of the associated strata ; and one 

 of our body has enabled us to refer many of these plants to their natural 

 families in living nature, by an ingenious method of exhibiting polished 

 sections of their stems : but it has been reserved to Mr. W.Hutton in 

 pursuing this line of inquiry, to complete the solution of the problem 

 by demonstrating the vegetable structure in coal itself. The Memoir 

 of Mr. W. Hutton is further of high and practical utility in describing 

 the source of those enormous volumes of imprisoned gases, which 

 upon admixture with our atmosphere become explosive, and occasion 

 such disastrous results to our miners. 



As a slight contribution towards a knowledge of the condition of 

 the surface of the earth during one of the periods in the formation of 

 the oolitic series, which is marked by its vegetation, I offered to you 

 a few remarks on the vertical position of the stems of Equiseti, 

 in a sandstone of the eastern Moorlands of Yorkshire. This pheno- 

 menon extending over a large area is analogous to that observed 

 in the Isle of Portland by Dr. Buckland and Mr. de laBeche; from 

 which however it differs, as it appeared to me, in requiring for its 

 explanation the desiccation of submarine sediments, so as to leave a 

 stagnant marsh for the place of growth of these plants ; which, after 

 this marsh had been gradually silted up, were submerged by a fresh 

 irruption of the sea, accumulating above them the deposits of the 

 middle and upper oolite. 



General Geology and Physical Geography. — Geologists have 

 long felt that a period would arrive, when every geographer would 

 seek to obtain a competent acquaintance with what may be termed 

 the anatomy of his subject; and it is therefore gratifying to remark, 

 that the past year has been prolific in works explanatory of the in- 

 timate association of geology with the physical geography of Great 

 Britain. 



England. — The encouragement which, at the suggestion of Colonel 

 Colby, the Board of Ordnance has afforded to all the surveyors who, 

 during their labours in the field, have kept a register of the mineral 

 changes accompanying variations of outline in the land, is now pro- 

 ducing the happiest results. 



Mr. Wright has already given us ample proof of this, in the geological 



