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Among the geological specimens presented to the United States 
National Museum by the Commissioners in charge of the exhibit: of 
the Brazilian Government at Saint Louis in the United States, in 1904, 
there was found a large specimen of boghead coal, labeled as coming 
from « Puhuy, Bahia?, Brazil». 
The geographical position of this locality is unknown to me, and 
I have not been able cartographically to corroborate the relations of a 
town named Puhuy with the State of Bahia. 
However, I give the geographical data as transcribed by a repre- 
sentative of the National Museum. 
Whether or not there is error or confusion as to the transcription 
from the Brazilian locality label; it is certain that the epecimen comes 
from the. Brazilian Exhibit at Saint Louis ; and the microscopical 
examination of this specimen has proved so interesting that I venture 
to includea brief description of it in this report. 
The Brazilian boghead is massive, conchoidal, and black, with 
very little satiny lustre on any surface. When finely pulverized or 
viewed in extremely thin edges it appears somewhat brownish. 
The rock is very dense, refusing to cleave on a plane surface in any 
direction. Its aspect as well as its microscopical compositiun is so 
similar to that of the kerozene shale -boghead from New South Wales 
that, wereit not for the source of the specimen and the record of the 
original label, Ishould hardly venture to describe it as pertaining to 
Brazilian palaeontology. 
When cut in thin sections vertical to the bedding, the rock is found 
to consist of a very dark brown, amorphous ground mass or -funda- 
mental jelly (phytozyme), filled with brilliantly translucent, yellow 
bodies of somewhat irregular outline, but more or less: distinctly 
lenticular. 
These bodies comprise the fossilized, gelatinous (gelosic) residue 
of algal thally of the genus described by Renault and Bertrand as 
Reinschia. 
As shown in the photographed vertical section, Pl. XI. fig. 41, 
these fossil thalli vary greatly in size, some of them, nearly 500 
microns in greatest horizontal diameter, being many times the size of 
the young individuals. It will be observed that these yellow algal 
remains comprise the greater part of the rock, constituting over 80 °/, 
of the total rock matter. In the horizontal section shown in fig. 12 the 
cell walls in many of the thally appear as arather coarse fringe of 
projecting pillars. 
5560 aT 
