LEPIDOSTROBUS. 



45 



power, it appears as a dark-coloured vesicular mass, having its vesicles filled with a yellowish 

 matter. In the celebrated Boghead Trial these were mistaken, by some of the witnesses, 

 for the cellular structure of plants, and all the evidence of the chemical witnesses went to 

 show that they had not been able to dissolve such yellow matter out of the coal by the 

 most powerful solvents. When, however, the coal is subjected to distillation at a low 

 temperature, this matter goes off as a yellowish vapour, which, on being condensed, forms 

 crude paraffine oil. On afterwards examining the coke, it is found to be a black pulverulent 

 mass, very porous, and containing numerous vesicles, from which the yellow matter, first 

 seen under the microscope, had been expelled by the heat. Now, although at present we 

 cannot account for the rich oil-producing qualities of these coals by the macrospores found 

 in them, it is possible that the microspores of some cones, not far removed from 

 Flemingites or Lepidostrohm, may have largely entered into their composition and produced 

 it. These smaller bodies appear to have been preserved in coal, like the larger ones, 

 without having undergone much alteration ; but, owing to their smaller size, they have 

 generally not attracted much notice. 



As might have been anticipated from their great power of resisting decomposition, the 

 organs of fructification of recent plants would be most likely to be preserved at the present 

 day, so we find that such also are the portions of plants most completely preserved in the 

 coal beds. This is most probably owing to the fatty oils and waxy substances which 

 protect them, as well as to the presence of.- tannin. Baron Bcichenbach first discovered 

 paraffine in the wood of the Beech, whose leaves have on their outsides a thick coating 

 of waxy matter ; and the great quantity of parafiine found in brown cannel coals, such as 

 those of Boghead and Methel, may be partly due to the waxy matter of the organs of 

 fructification and leaves of the ancient plants, with which they were enabled then to resist 

 moisture, as is now found to be the case in the Cabbage, Nasturtium, and other plants ; 

 the paraffine now found in the coal being in much the same state as it existed in the old 

 plants, and very little altered. 



The microspores contained in the upper sporangia of Lepidostrobus Brownii 

 (Carruthers), which may now probably be regarded as the fructification of Lejiidodendron 

 Harcourtii, are very little altered, and appear like crude paraffine, and different in composition 

 from the sporangia in which they are enclosed, and the column to which they are 

 attached, both these being chiefly composed of carbonate of lime. 



In Mr. Carruther's specimens of the genus Flemingites, the small round bodies which 

 he terms sporangia (see above, p. 42), but which some of the first livhig authorities now 

 consider to be macrospores, appear to consist so far as their outer covering is concerned, 

 of paraffine or some similar hydrocarbon, whilst their insides contain bisulphide of iron 

 or carbonate of lime, according to the nature of the matrix in which the fossil occurs. 

 Generally the scale which supported them, according to Mr. Carruthers, or the sporangium 

 that contained them, as well as the column of the cone to which they were attached, 

 have been converted into coal, and lost all their structure. In other cases the last-named 



