The Testimony of the Rocks. 91 



"But the genuine vegetable organism of the formaiiion, indica- 

 tive of the highest rank of any yet found in it, is a true wood of 

 the cone-bearing order. I laid open the nodule whieh, contains- 

 this specimen, in one of the ichthyolite beds of Cromarty, rather 

 more than eighteen years ago ; but though I described it, in the 

 first edition of my little work on the Old Red Sandstone, in 1841,, 

 as exhibiting the woody fibre, it was not until 1845 that, with the 

 assistance of the optical lapidary, I subjected its sti-ucture to the 

 test of the mieroscope. It turned out, as I had anticipated, to be- 

 the portion of a tree ; and on my submitting the prepared speci- 

 men to one of our highest authorities,: — the late Mr. William. 

 Nicol, — he at once decided that the " reticulated texture of the 

 transverse section, though somewhat compressed, clearly indi- 

 cated a coniferous origin." I may add, that this most ancient 

 of Scottish lignites presents several peculiarities of structure^. 

 Like some of the Araucarians of the warmer latitudes, it exhibits- 

 no lines of yearly growth ; its medullary lays are slender, and 

 comparatively inconspicuous ; and the discs which mottle the 

 sides of its sap-chambers, when viewed in the longitudinal section,, 

 are exceedingly minute, and are ranged, so far as can be judged 

 in their imperfect state of keeping, in the alternate order peculiar 

 to the Araucarians. On what perished l&nd of the early Palaeozoic 

 ages did this venerably antique tree cast root and flourish, when 

 the extinct genera Pterichthys and Coccosteus were enjoying life 

 by millions in the surrounding seas, long ere the flora or fauna 

 of the Coal Measures had begun to be ? 



"I may be here permitted to mention, that in a little volume,, 

 written in reply to a widely known and very ingenious work on 

 the Development hypothesis, I described and figured this unequi- 

 vocally genuine lignite, m order to show that a true wood takes its- 

 place among the earliest terrestrial plants known to the geologist. 

 I at the same time mentioned, — desirous, of course, that the facts 

 of the question should be fairly stated, whatever their bearing, — 

 that the nodule in which it occurred had been partially washed 

 out of the fish-bed in which I found it, by the action of the surf; 

 and my opponent, fixing on the circumstance, insinuated, in the- 

 answer with which he honored me, that it had not belonged to- 

 the bed at all, but had been derived from some other formation of 

 later date. He ought, however, to have taken into account my 

 further statement, namely, that the same nodule which enclosed 

 the lignite contained part of another fossil, the well-marked scales. 



