74 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 20, 



and these bear branchlets at short intervals, in whorls of threes or 

 fours, which diverge at nearly right angles from the branch, some- 

 thing like those of an Araucaria* 



It is not improbable that these striate branches may belong to the 

 same plants as the stems (and roots ?) above mentioned. 



Rootlets (PI. V. figs. 3-7). — Other and very numerous specimens, 

 lying flat in the stone, and presenting simply a linear rachis with 

 alternate (fig. 4) or dichotomous (fig. 3) smooth branchlets, appear 

 to me to be far more likely referable to the smaller roots than to 

 anything else. They occur about 6 or 8 inches long, and seldom so 

 much as a quarter of an inch broad ; they taper slowly, and are 

 flexuous or zigzag at the origin of the branches, which are them- 

 selves again branched. 



In a few instances irregular granulations occur on the roots : in 

 others (fig. 7) lateral buds or tubercles take the place of the ter- 

 minal branchlets or rootlets, and become crowded towards the 

 tips. They put one in mind of the tubercular roots of some of the 

 Leguminous plants, or may be still better compared with the tubercles 

 or exostoses found on the roots of many Coniferous plants, Arau- 

 caria, Thuja, Podocarpus, and others*. These tubercles seem to me 

 to give great colour to the idea that the linear fragments to which 

 they are attached are roots ; and, as these are in most respects 

 similar to the other specimens, with dichotomous or alternating 

 branches (figs. 3-6), there is a strong presumption that the latter 

 are roots too. Whether any of them may be referable to the woody 

 plants above described, rather than to the Lycopodiaceous plants 

 next to be noted, it is scarcely possible to decide ; but the former is 

 certainly probable. I am more inclined to regard all these as roots, 

 since they bear the greatest resemblance to similar fragments abun- 

 dant in the Upper Devonian beds of the South of Ireland, and which, 

 from their mode of occurrence in a sort of hardened underclay 

 beneath the beds of sandstone, I have always thought to be roots f. 



Similar fragments are figured in Mr. Hugh Miller's last workj, 

 and in these the dichotomous character is clearly seen. 



I do not think their structure or mode of branching at all like 

 that of marine plants. Nor have they any distinct trace of a mid- 

 rib, as if they were cleft or divided leaflets, or of parallel veins, as in 

 the seawrack (Zostera). Nor, indeed, do they show anything but 

 a linear riband (probably once a soft cylindric root) which branched 

 repeatedly. 



A few more perfect plants deserve to receive specific notice ; and, 

 in naming the remarkable Lycopodiaceous plant (fig. 8), I have had 

 in view both the kindness of Mr. John Miller, of Thurso, and the 

 memory of the lamented author of " The Testimony of the Rocks/' 



* See Dr. Hooker's paper on these root-tubercles, Proc. Linn. Soc. 1845, 

 No. 58. p. 355*. I have the satisfaction of Dr. Hooker's concurrence in this view 

 of the nature of the fossils. 



f Proc. Dublin Geol. Society, vol. vii. p. 63. 



t Testimony of the Rocks, p. 429. 



