182 DR BENNETT ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE 



tered through a substance often more than two feet deep, extending for acres, 

 and it may be for miles. If these yellow masses be cells, what is their origin ? 

 They cannot come from the woody tissue of the neighbouring coal, for, as 

 we have endeavoured to show, such coal is destitute of them. The rings in 

 coal are much smaller in diameter, are of regular size, and present the cha- 

 racter of a tube cut transversely. Such rings could never be confounded with 

 the yellow masses of the mineral. But supposing these latter to be cells, 

 could such multitudes of them be derived from the gigantic ferns of the coal 

 formation, or such as are imbedded in the mineral? I think not; because the 

 amount of scalariform and woody tissue is too disproportioned to the number of 

 the cells to favour such an idea. Besides, what kind of force or power could 

 have been in operation that would have separated and collected the delicate 

 cells, and left the ducts and other tissues of the plants by themselves, and out 

 of sight, throughout such enormous masses. I have carefully examined the cells 

 in large ferns, and observed the singular markings of cellular tissue, woody 

 fibre, and scalariform ducts, many of them present, visible even to the naked 

 eye, — than which nothing can be more unlike the Torbanehill mineral. The 

 cells themselves are also larger, of more uniform size, and contain numerous 

 starch granules ; whilst the true resin cells are exceedingly large and distinct, 

 strongly analogous, indeed, to what I have described as existing in the woody 

 texture of coal, but wholly dissimilar to any thing observable in the Torbane- 

 hill mineral. Such a view, indeed, would, it seems to me, lead to the extra- 

 ordinary conclusion that this mineral is composed of a vegetable tissue, more 

 cellular than any plant ever yet met with, recent or fossil, and so rich in cells as 

 to be wholly dissimilar to what we can even imagine to have existed, taking its 

 size and bulk into consideration. Such masses of cells could not have been formed 

 or nourished without ducts passing through them in various definite directions, to 

 convey a nutritive fluid ; and yet we find such ducts only to be accidental, and only 

 distinctly connected with plants imbedded here and there in the general mass. 



Whilst, then, the notion of these yellow masses being vegetable cells seems to 

 me opposed to every known or conceivable fact yet ascertained to exist in vegetable 

 histology, or from such as are demonstrable in the Torbanehill mineral, the theory 

 of their being bituminoid masses imbedded in clay, appears to be in perfect har- 

 mony with all of them, and especially answers the reasons given by Dr Redfern. 



With a view of determining whether the Torbanehill mineral could by any pos- 

 sibility be produced by a process similar to that of the formation of peat, which was 

 described at the last meeting of the Society by Dr Fleming,* I have examined vari- 

 ous specimens of peat, and have confirmed his description. They consist of mosses, 

 especially of the Sphagnum, the spiral cells of which plant are peculiar, and easily 

 recognized, associated with broken-down woody tissue, root-stalks, and bundles 



* Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Session 1853-4, p. 216. 



