Vol. 6$.~] THE XERO PHYTIC CHARACTERS OE COAL-PLANTS. 293 



of saline swamps, for which he had asked. Provided such could 

 accumulate, coal might be made of them : but as yet no proofs 

 appeared to be forthcoming. In regard to the President's remark 

 that marine organisms sometimes were found associated with coal, 

 he suggested that they might have been swept in with the sand 

 when the forest subsided. In reply to Prof. Oliver's observation 

 that coal-plants sometimes indicated both hygrophytic and xero- 

 phytic characters, he observed that this tropophytism (as 

 Dr. Schimper called it) was particularly characteristic of the 

 Restiacece and other swamp-plants in the Cape Plats below the 

 Table-Mountain Eange. With regard to Stigmaria being a swamp- 

 tree, he observed that not only was it totally devoid of every one of 

 the characters of existing trees that grow in water, but possessed 

 all the features of a tree growing in ordinary soil without water. 

 Moreover, Stigmarian roots had been found growing below a bed 

 made of the leaves of Cordaites, a plant which, like all the recent 

 Gymnosperms, was undoubtedly xerophytic. 



