§ 27. FOSSIL PLANTS OF THE OOLITE. 525 



districts of the West Indies, New Holland, and the Cape 

 of Good Hope, &c. A large species of Marestail (Equi- 

 setum columnare) is abundant in the Carboniferous Oolite ; 

 and in Yorkshire so many of these plants occur in an erect 

 position, that it is supposed they must have grown on the 

 spots they now occupy : we shall recur to this fact here- 

 after. 



One of the most remarkable vegetable fossils discovered 

 in this formation in England, is the fruit of a tree allied 

 to the Pandanus or Screw-pine, from the lower oolite of 

 Charmouth in Dorsetshire.* 



Fragments of trunks of coniferous trees of the Araucarian 

 type are found throughout the Jurassic formation ; and, as 

 we have already stated, the last bed of the Oolite, when 

 elevated above the waters, was clothed with pine-forests 

 (vol. i. 387). 



The quantity of drift wood in a carbonized state, but not 

 converted into coal, is very considerable in the argillaceous 

 strata. In the Oxford clay, at Trowbridge, my son found 

 masses of wood in abundance ; oysters, terebratulas, and other 

 shells, were often adherent to the fragments of trunks and 

 branches of trees, which had evidently been drifted from a 

 distance into the bed of the sea. Much of this wood was soft 

 and flexible when first exposed, and when dry, burnt with a 

 bright flame. In the Lias of Whitby, Lyme Kegis, and 

 other localities, the wood is often calcareous, and admits of 

 a fine polish : occasionally silicified masses are met with.f 



27. Zoophytes and Radiaria. — Of corals and other 

 polypiferous zoophytes hundreds of species abound. The 

 reefs of coral, constituting the Coral-rag, have already 

 been described. In some parts of Germany the Coral-rag 

 is largely developed, and all the corals are silicified in 



* Dr. Buckland's Bridgwater Essay, vol. ii. pi. 63. 

 f Beautiful specimens of the fossil wood and plants from the Lias 

 and Oolite are exhibited in the British Museum. 



