174 MESSBS. KIRKBY AND DUFF ON THE 



like so much tapestry. They were of great length : one speci- 

 men, the extremities of which were not visible, was forty-five 

 feet long, with a uniform breadth of four feet. With the excep- 

 tion of four Calamites, the Sigillariae were the only fossils that 

 occurred here ; and as the shale forming the roof was light col- 

 oured and wet, and the fossils jet black, they were seen to 

 splendid advantage. Although most of the specimens were 

 flattened and in a horizontal position, there were yet a few ver- 

 tical and round stems intermixed among them. We counted 

 eleven of the latter in an area of less than a quarter of an acre. 

 The coal was only two feet thick ; and as the fireclay was lifted 

 along with it, we had a favourable opportunity of tracing these 

 stems from their Stigmaria roots up through the coal into the 

 roof above. We measured one which was thirteen by nine and 

 a half feet in diameter. (J. D.) 



Another spectacle of a like nature we saw in the waste of 

 Newton Cap Colliery, where the roof (a lightish grey shale) was 

 thickly strewed with large Calamites, all other fossils being ab- 

 sent. The Calamites were from six to nine feet long, in some 

 cases with the roots attached, and all lying in nearly one direc- 

 tion, as though they had been swept over and buried by a flood 

 of mud-laden water on the spot where they had grown. This 

 was one of our earliest palasontological experiences underground. 

 We had often before seen Calamites in museums, and had col- 

 lected them at pit heaps, quarries, and other localities on the 

 surface, but we had never yet got, as it were, among an over- 

 thrown brake of them, that we might almost have measured by 

 the acre. 



Where we have noticed many Calamites in the roof, as we 

 Tiave done repeatedly, it is very rarely that we have found As- 

 terophyllites along with them, although the latter is now sup- 

 posed by many palaeontologists to be part of the same plant as 

 Calamites. But we have observed great masses of Asterophyllites 

 and Sphenophyllum (chiefly the former) only a few bords distant 

 from others with a range of roof full of large Calamites. 



Ferns were found most abundant in the roof of the Five 

 Quarter at Lands Pit; and somewhat less abundant, though still 



