1848.] Observations made on a Botanical Excursion. 361 



tries as widely remote in geographical position as in physical features, 

 should possess any plants in common : and especially so large a propor- 

 tion of species, that a recognizable number of these should survive that 

 wreck of a Regnum Vegetabile of whose existence the coal and its ac- 

 companying fossils are rather the Index than the Historians. It is 

 certainly very remarkable that any distinct relationship should exist 

 between the English and Indian coal fields, and that it is betrayed by 

 a genus so peculiar as Glossopteris, which is further common to the 

 fossil Flora of Australia ; but this circumstance loses value from the 

 fact of prevailing forms of Ferns being common to species from all 

 parts of the world, and yet indicating no affinity between such plants, 

 which are only to be recognized by their fructification, an obsolete 

 character in almost all fossil specimens. The Oolite coal of England, 

 again, abounds in representatives of existing tropical plants — these are 

 absent in the Indian coal fields ; which on the other hand presents us 

 with novel forms of vegetable life, some of them common only to this and 

 to the Australian fossil Flora, and equally distinct from any known living 

 or fossil vegetables. In short, the Indian coal fossils are more widely 

 dissimilar from any living plants either of the temperate or tropical 

 Flora, than are the fossils of the oldest English carboniferous period. 

 I do not moot the question of the age of these beds in a geological point 

 of view, for that subject is in able hands ; though having now visited 

 the Australian, Indian and English Oolite beds, I may add that the two 

 former present the strongest features in common, both in points of 

 extent, and in position (geologically and otherwise), as also a wide 

 difference in their Floras from those flourishing over them. 



The Rev. Mr. Everest, in some excellent remarks on this coal field 

 considers the position of the beds relatively to the general features of 

 the surrounding country, as evidences of the coal having been deposited 

 in hollows between the granite hills which rise out of the plain, like 

 islets.* 



I had no opportunity of verifying this theory, which is perhaps 

 hardly compatible with the proofs (and these are ample) of the relative 

 position of the coal-beds having suffered much change since their depo - 

 sition. 



* Gleanings of Science, 1831, p. 133. 



