GOPPERT ON THE FLORA OF THE BROWX-COAI. FORMATION. O 



Dr. Thomas, to whom I am mdehted for many interesting contribu- 

 tions to my inquiries, having chemically examined several remains of 

 wood from the brown-coal deposits of the Samland, and found suc- 

 cinic acid in them, considers that these trees must also be added to 

 those producing amber, and that these deposits generally must be re- 

 garded as the place in which this substance originates. I would 

 however remark, that this fact alone cannot be considered as sufficient 

 proof, since succinic acid occurs as a product of oxidation of many 

 kinds of wax or fats, in many deposits of brown-coal, and even in the 

 resin of still-existing coniferee and several other plants, as in wormwood 

 and lettuce. The actual occurrence of amber in the wood or the layers 

 of bark can alone prove decisive, and justify us in regarding a fossil 

 as belonging to a tree producing amber. But even were the original 

 bed containing the amber-tree actually discovered on the coast of 

 Prussia, and that it may be so I have the less reason to doubt, from 

 having never visited the place myself, still the numerous facts col- 

 lected by my respected coadjutor, proving the wide drifting of the 

 amber by floods in the districts round the Baltic, lose nothing of their 

 value, and I can now only confirm their truth from many observations 

 which I have either made personally in Silesia and the Lausitz, or 

 obtained from others*. In not one of the many brown-coal beds 

 opened in our province has amber ever occurred, but always in the 

 undoubted drift deposits {in rein aufgeschwemmtem Lande) above 

 them, generally very near the surface, in sand or loam-pits with many 

 boulders, and, as very lately above the brown-coal bed at Schwiebus, 

 with fragments of friable wood rounded on all the corners like drift- 

 w'ood, such as I never saw in our brown-coal deposits. The num- 

 ber of localities in both provinces known to me at present amounts to 

 ninety. I confine myself in these, as in all similar cases, entirely to 

 observations on which prejudice can have no influence, as I do not con- 

 sider myself qualified to decide on geognostic and geological questions ; 

 but I entreat geologists not to neglect such observations, especially at 

 present, when there seems a disposition unconditionally to recognise 

 our brown-coal deposits as the native place of the amber. I have 

 only interfered with this question so far as, from the existing mate- 

 rials, considered in a purely botanical point of view, I have endea- 

 voured to show, what hitherto had not been done, that there existed 

 at least one amber-bearing tree ; and at the same time, from the other 

 enclosed vegetable remains, to construct a picture of the co-existing 

 flora. A solution of the still unsettled problem of the original repo- 

 sitory of the amber I leave to geologists. Almost the whole of the 

 specimens of the amber-tree in my collection mentioned above show 

 distinct traces of having been drifted. 



Continually occupied with the examination of the bituminous wood 

 found in the brown-coal deposits of Northern Germany and the Rhine, 

 I shall annex to these observations a few of the results obtained. 



1 . The predominance of Coniferse seems very remarkable. Among 

 300 specimens of bituminous wood collected in the Silesian brown- 



* Julius Miiller in der AUgem. Naturhist. Zeit. von Sachse, vol. i. 2 Heft. 



