Animals and Plants. 305 



from microscopic and field examinations of the coal and carbona- 

 ceous shales, that the thickest beds of coal, at least in Eastern Ame- 

 rica consist in great part of the flattened bark of coniferous, sigil- 

 laroid and lepidodendroid trees, the wood of which has perished 

 by slow decay, or appears only in the state -of fragments and 

 films of mineral charcoal. This is a view, however, on which I do 

 not now wish to insist, until I have further opportunities of 

 confirming it by observation. 



The most abundant locality of sternbergia with which I am 

 acquainted, occurs in the neighbourhood of the town of Pictou, 

 immediately below the bed of erect calamites described in the 

 Journal of the Gl-eological Society (Vol. V, p. 194). The fossils are 

 found in interrupted beds of very coarse sandstone, with calcareous 

 concretions, imbedded in a thick reddish brown sandstone. These 

 gray patches are full of well preserved calamites, which have 

 either grown upon them, or have been drifted in clumps with 

 their roots entire. The appearances suggest the idea of patches 

 of gray sand rising from a bottom of red mud, with clumps of 

 growing calamites which arrested quantities of drift plants, con- 

 sisting principally of sternbergia and fragments of much decayed 

 wood and bark, now in the state of coaly matter too much pene- 

 trated by iron pyrites to show its structure distinctly. We thus 

 probably have the fresh growing calamites, entombed along with 

 the debris of the old decaying conifers of some neighbouring- 

 shore ; furnishing an illustration of the truth that the most ephe- 

 meral and perishable forms may be fossilized and preserved, con- 

 temporaneously with the decay of the most durable tissues. The 

 rush of a single summer may be preserved with its minutest striae 

 unharmed, when the giant pine of centuries has crumbled into 

 mould. It is so now, and it was so equally in the carboniferous 

 period. 



ARTICLE XXVI. — On Parthenogenesis of Animals and Plants. 

 By Berthold Seemann, Ph. D., F. L. 3. 



(Read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science 

 at Montreal, August 14, 1857.) 



One of the most paradoxical questions lately brought before the 

 tribunal of scientific opinion is that of the Parthenogenesis of 

 Animals and Plants ; and in venturing to submit it to this meeting 



