SternhergicB. 299 



tific strangers as any of the others. The closing evening was 

 distinguished by a civic €?itertainmeiit, affording an opportunity 

 for a more full display of local oratory and fashion than any of 

 the others. On Thursday, a charming excursion was organized to 

 the rapids of the St. Lawrence and the localities of interest in 

 their vicinity. Tastes differ, and these recreations of Science 

 were as different as tastes ; but each was enainently successful, 

 in its own way. 



ARTICLE XXV. — On the Varieties and Mode of Preservation of 

 the Fossils knoion as Sternhergim. By J. W! Dawson, F. G. S, 



The fossils which have been named Sternbergise and sometimes 

 Artisise, are usually mere casts in clay or sand, having a trans- 

 y-ersely wrinkled surface, and sometimes an external coaly coating 

 and traces of internal coaly partitions. They are found in the 

 coal formation rocks of most countries, and very abundantly in 

 those of Nova Scotia. Until the recent discoveries of Corda and 

 Williamson, they were objects of curious and varied conjecture to 

 geologists and botanists, and were supposed to indicate some very 

 extraordinaiy and anomalous vegetable structure. They are now 

 known to be casts of the piths or internal medullary cavities of 

 trees, and the genera to which some of them belong have been 

 pointed out. Many interesting truths with respect to them, both 

 in their geological and botanical relations, still, however, remain 

 to be developed ; and in the present paper I propose to offer some 

 further contributions toward their history, and the geological in- 

 ferences deducible from it. 



In a paper communicated to the Geological Society of London, 

 in 1846, to which Professor "Williamson, in his able memoir in 

 the Manchester Transactions,* assigns the credit of first suggesting 

 that connection between these curious fossils and the conifers, 

 which he has so successfully worked out, I stated my belief that 

 those specimens of Sternbergise which occur with only thin 

 smooth coatings of coal, might have belonged to rush-like endo- 

 gens; while those to which fragments of fossil wood were 

 •attached, presented structures resembling those of conifers. These 

 last were not, however, so well preserved as to justify me in 

 speaking very positively as to their coniferous affinities. They 



* Vol. ix., 1851. 



