E. B. Andrews—New and interesting Coal Plants. 4638 
number of new forms of ancient vegetation. At the bottom of 
the layer is found less than an inch of a very peculiar substance 
of vegetable origin of brown color, soft like rotten wood, with- 
out lamination and filled with fragments of a minute form of 
plant resembling an Asterophyliites. In it are fish scales 
indicating, according to Dr. Newberry, a new genus and 
species, and also a small Lingula, perhaps too indistinct for 
specific determination. Above the half-solidified brown band 
we find an inch of highly bituminous laminated cannel shale, 
presenting a satin surface in its fracture. This shale contains 
a few plants, the most numerous form being leaves of Lepido- 
dendron. This shale passes upward into an ordinary bitumin- 
ous shale, in the lower two inches of which nearly all the new 
plants are found. 
e have here the evidence of a marsh in which there was 
acccumulated upon a micaceous sandy bottom the minute moss- 
Square yards have been uncovered and examined. 
In this little marsh grew plants of well-marked Devonian 
types, and others of a type generally found in formations more 
recent than the Coal-measures. Besides these, there are many 
oal-measure forms, but with scarcely an exception, they are 
of new species. 
' Of the Devonian types, one is a new species of Archwopteris 
Dawson, (Paleopteris Schimper.) The <A. Jacksoni Dawson, 
from the Devonian of New Brunswick and Maine may be re- 
garded as the typical form of this genus. The new Ohio spe- 
cies I have called A. stricta. It is a fern of great beauty, 
smaller and more delicate-than A. J/acksoni. The pinne are 
alternate, somewhat closely set, growing out of the rachis at an 
70° to 80° 5° innales are al- 
angle of 70° to 80°, rarely assmallas45°. The pinnales a 
ternate, oblanceolate, obtuse, decurring on the narrow rachis, 
disconnected to the base, with a strong nerve, dividing near the 
base into three to five branches, which themselves fork once or 
twice before reaching the margin. Prof. Fontaine reports the 
finding of A. Jacksoni (or possibly a closely-allied species), in 
his conglomerate coal series on New River, W. Va., over a coal 
Seam perhaps 500 feet above the base of the Coal-measures. 
This is more than 1500 feet lower in the series of the Alleghany 
