66 GEOLOGICAL MEMOIRS. 
Kapfnach or that near Rufi on the Schannisberg, since no determi- 
nable plants occur in either of these localities. In Kapfnach the 
mode of entombment seems to have been altogether different from 
that on the Upper Rhone. In the latter the plants must have been 
almost immediately enveloped in the marls, otherwise the leaves could 
not have been thus preserved with even their most delicate veins. 
From the circumstance that along with the ripe fruit of the Callitris, 
as it is found on the trees in the spring from the previous year, also 
young new fruit still hangs on the branches, and further from the 
young, still unformed, fruit of the maple, it may be concluded that the 
great catastrophe which destroyed the forest and buried it in the mass 
of marl, took place in the end of spring or the beginning of summer. 
In Kapfnach, on the contrary, the plants seem only to have been 
covered and enveloped in the marls after they had begun partially to 
decay. In the latter a black marl (named Strassberg) rests imme- 
diately on the coarse-grained sandstone; above this follows the coal 
(Flétz), covered in some places by a fcetid marl with Limnee, Pla- 
norbes, and Melanie ; to this succeeds a bluish-grey marl altogether 
similar to that on the Upper Rhone, and above this sandstone with 
Melania Escheri, Anodonta, &ce. Since the marls that enclose the 
coal beds contain freshwater shells in great numbers, it is probable 
that the plants which formed them were covered for a long time by | 
the fresh water in which these mollusks lived, and that in consequence 
of this all the more delicate tissues of the plants perished ; and hence 
in the blue marls above the coal, which are as fine-grained and as 
well-adapted to preserve the leaves of plants as those in the Upper 
Rhone, no leaves occur. Remains of reed-like plants alone are found 
in them. This also explains why, in the stems of the palms met 
with in the coal of Kapfnach, only the fascicule of vessels are ob- 
served, whilst all the finer tissues have vanished. Sometimes whole 
bundles of these vascular fasciculee may be seen lying close together, 
which have been named Fasciculites by the geologists, and fir-needles 
(leaves) by the workmen in the coal-mines. 
[J. N.] 
