﻿106 



FOSSIL PLANTS. 



less compressed, and generally flatter on one side than the other (plate iv, figs. 1 and 2). 

 Not unfrequently the flattened side turns in so as to form, a groove. The surface is 

 marked in quincuncial order with pustules, or rather areolae, with a rising in the middle, 

 in the centre of which rising a minute speck is often observable. From different modes 

 and degrees of compression, and probably from different states of the original vegetable, 

 these areolae assume very different appearances ; sometimes running into indistinct rimae 

 like the bark of an aged willow ; sometimes, as in the shale impressions, exhibiting little 

 more than a neat sketch of the concentric circles (figs. 4, 5, G). Mr. Martin suspected 

 that these pustules were the marks of the attachment of the penduncules of leaves, and 

 pi. xii represents a specimen in which he thought that he had discovered the reliquiae of 

 the leaves themselves. We have examined the specimen when the drawing, which is 

 extremely correct, was made, but are convinced that Mr. Martin was misled by an 

 accidental compression in describing these leaves as being flat. Numerous specimens in 

 ' Ganister,' in which the lateral compression of the trunk is generally trifling, place the 

 assertion beyond a doubt that the fibrous processes, acini, spines, or whatever else they 

 may be called, are cylindrical ; and small fragments of these cylinders show distinctly a 

 central line (pith) coinciding with the point in the centre of the pustule. Convinced of 

 the existence of these fibres, we were soon able to detect their remains, forming consider- 

 able masses of stone, particularly of Coal-bind, on Wibsey Slack and at Lower Wike, 

 where their contorted figure imitates the figure of Serpulae ; but it excited much surprise, 

 on examining the projecting ends of some trunks which lay horizontally in a bed of clay, 

 extending along the southern bank of the rivulet which separates the townships of 

 Pudsey and Tong, and which is exposed by slips in several places, to find traces of these 

 fibres proceeding from the central cylinder, in rays through the stratum, in every direc- 

 tion, to the distance of above twenty feet. Repeated observations, and the concurrent 

 conviction of unprejudiced persons made attentive to the phenomenon, compelled the 

 belief that they originally belonged to the trunks in question, and consequently that the 

 vegetable grew in its present horizontal position at a time that the stratum was in a state 

 capable of supporting its vegetation, and shot out its fibres in every direction through the 

 then yielding mud. For if it grew erect, even admitting the fibres to be as rigid as the 

 firmest spines with which we are acquainted, it would be difficult to devise means gentle 

 enough to bring it into a recumbent posture without deranging their position. This 

 supposition gains strength from the circumstance that they are found lying in all 

 directions across one another and not to any particular point of the compass. 



" The flattened and sometimes grooved form of one side of the cylinder has already 

 been noticed. Woodward already observed that along this side there generally, or at 

 least frequently, ran an included cylinder, which at one extremity of the specimen would 

 approach the outside, so as almost to leave the trunk, while on the other end it seemed 

 nearly central. A reference to his 'Catalogue,' vol. i, part 2, p. 104, to Mr. Parkinson's 

 e Organic Remains,' vol. i, p. 427, and to Martin's ' Petrificata Derbiensia,' fig. 1 c, will 



