
RECENTLY DISCOVERED IN CRAIGLEITH QUARRY. 221 
fossil tree of large size, undistinguishable by any essential character from the 
araucarious fossils of Craigleith and Granton. The beds where it was found 
dip towards 10° north of west at an inclination of about 15°. It was described 
to me by Mr Gowans, lessee of the quarry, as lying horizontally in the lower 
part of the white sandstone rock under at least 15 feet of stone, and covered 
over its upper surface with 2 inches of shining, unattached, bituminous coal. 
Mr Gowans thinks some of it had been carted away before his attention was 
drawn to it. What remains consists of four blocks, measuring together about 
10 feet, neither roundish nor flattened, but quadrangular, somewhat rhombic, 
and with rounded edges. The girth varies from 63 to 73 feet. They had been 
uniformly covered with about 5th of an inch of loosely attached, black, shin- 
ing, very brittle coaly matter, much of which has been rubbed off in removing 
the blocks. These have been presented by Mr Gowans to the collection of the 
Botanic Garden, along with several fragments of a fine Sigillaria 6 feet in length. 
The Sigillaria has nowhere any coaly crust on its surface. 
The unattached and attached coaly matter of the large fossil tree proves to 
be a superior caking splint coal, the same in all its properties with the black 
crust of the Craigleith fossil, No. 5, now in the British Museum. The attached 
coal has a density of 1:274, and froths up in caking ; that which was unattached 
has a density of 1-284, and cakes without frothing up. The fragments of the 
interior which I have examined have a density of 2°804, and a somewhat 
methodical nodulated fracture, and a grey-black, shining, spangled surface, like 
that of black mica-slate. Thin slices show before the microscope much 
radiated crystalline mineral matter, and small patches of deformed cells and 
fibrils. But Mr Peacu has shown me small portions which present, on longi- 
tudinal and transverse sections, the longitudinal fibrils crossed by medullary 
rays, and the formal transversely cut cells of the fibrils, which characterise the 
great fossils of the two other quarries. 
The chemical examination of the substance of the Redhall fossil yielded 
precisely such results as would have led me to believe, had I not known other- 
wise, that I was analysing WirHaw’s fossil from Craigleith, or that which has 
been sent to the British Museum. It effervesces with acids like a limestone. 
About 3°3 per cent. of charcoal remains undissolved ; and lime, magnesia, and 
protoxide of iron are found largely in solution, the last in such proportion as to 
indicate the presence of 23 per cent. of carbonate of protoxide of iron in the 
fossil. The substance of the sigillaria, on the other hand, I found to be firmly 
accreted sand, like the sandstone matrix, and, like it, causing no effervescence 
with acids, but yielding to them 1°6 of foreign ingredients, which consist of lime, 
magnesia, and oxide of iron. | 
