672 



THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect. VII. 



fold, five large stems (Sufillarice) were found erect, with 

 their roots extending into a layer of impure clay below. 

 They stood on the same plane, and near to each other The 

 trunks were surrounded and filled by a soft blue shale, the 

 carbonized bark being all that remained of the original 

 structure. The stems are gnarled and knotted, and have de- 

 corticated prominences, like those in barked trunks of our old 

 dicotyledonous trees. All these trunks appear to have been 

 broken off by violence, at a height of four or five feet above 

 the roots, and no traces of the upper part of the stems or 

 branches were detected.* 



In constructing the railway tunnel at Clay-cross, a few 

 miles south of Chesterfield, through the middle portion of 

 the Derbyshire coal-measures, in 1838, a group of nearly 

 forty trees (Sigillarice) was discovered. These stood at 

 right angles to the planes of stratification, and not more than 

 three or four feet apart. f 



On the coast of Northumberland, within the length of 

 half a mile, twenty upright trees were observed by Mr. 

 Trevelyan ; and similar fossils were noticed many miles dis- 

 tant from this spot, in the same coal-field ; as if they were 

 a continuation of a submerged forest, the trees of which 

 had maintained their erect position, like those of the Isle of 

 Portland (ante, p. 387). Examples of isolated upright 

 trunks, with more or less of the roots attached, are not 

 uncommon. In the Derwent mines, at the depth of fifty-five 

 fathoms, among numerous examples which were lying in 

 horizontal layers, were several in an erect position. Two 

 stems of Sigillariae, situated in the space cleared out to get 

 at the lead ore, stood upright, having their roots firmly 

 impacted in a bed of bituminous shale ; they were five 

 feet high, and two in diameter.J 



* Medals of Creation, vol. i. p. 131. f Geol. Proc. vol. iii. p. 270. 

 X Observations on Fossil Vegetables, by Henry Witham, Esq. 

 1 vol. 4to; Edinburgh, 1831. 



