TORBANEHILL MINERAL AND OF VARIOUS KINDS OF COAL. 181 



This result, as well as the confusion occasioned by the examination of the wit- 

 nesses, is evident from the observations made by the learned Judge to the jury, 

 from which I shall take the liberty of quoting : — 



" One general remark may be made on the microscopic testimony, and it is, 

 that there are those who see a thing, and also those who do not see it, — those 

 who do see it, cannot see it unless it is there, and those who cannot see it do not 

 see it at all. But very skilful persons looking for a thing and not seeing it, creates 

 a strong presumption that it is not there. But when other persons do find it, it 

 goes far to displace the notion that it is not there. But there is another observa- 

 tion on the microscopic evidence that occurred to me. I do not know whether 

 I am under any misapprehension, but I think that three, certainly two, of those 

 examined by the defenders are botanists also ; and I do not think that any of those 

 examined for the pursuer, three of them from London, represented themselves as 

 botanists. Now the defenders' witnesses are accustomed to look for plants, and 

 can understand them when they see them. The gentlemen on the other side, 

 again, looking for woody fibre or tissue, are not, as I understand, conversant or 

 skilful in fossil plants." * 



Now, so far from the botanists seeing what the histologists did not see, it is 

 nowhere made to appear in their evidence that they ever observed those rings on 

 a transverse section, which I have endeavoured to show are distinctive of true 

 coal. On the contrary, they contended that coal and the Torbanehill mineral were 

 similar in structure, the elements of the one existing in the other, both contain- 

 ing vegetable cells ; that the numerous yellow clear masses observed in the latter 

 were in point of fact such cells, and constituted the proof of vegetable organi- 

 zation. 



I think it of great importance to rescue the mode of investigation by means of 

 the microscope from all reproach in this case, and to point out that the discrepancy 

 which existed is not one of fact, but one of inference. I hope then it will be evi- 

 dent that the true scientific controversy is altogether connected with the question 

 of whether these yellow masses, which both parties saw, described, and figured, 

 are or are not vegetable cells. 



Now the view taken up by myself from the first, and which was also taken 

 up by Dr Adams and Mr Quekett, independently of each other, was that they 

 are not cells, but masses of a concrete bituminoid or resinoid substance, imbed- 

 ded in earthy matter. We could nowhere discover in them any trace of cell wall 

 or contents. Their mode of fracture was more crystalline in its character than 

 anything else ; they occurred confusedly together, and nowhere presented that de- 

 finite arrangement to one another, or to ducts and woody tissue, which exists in 

 plants. Numbers of them present no envelope or definite boundary, but are scat-.. 



* Mr Lyell's Report, pp. 238-9. 

 VOL. XXI. FART I. 3 C 



