672 



ME. W. S. GRESLET ON 



h. My experience is, that a considerable proportion of the under- 

 beds do not contain JStigmaria-roots at all ; but that they seldom fail 

 to reveal the presence of thin grass-like fossil markings, I admit. 



Very frequently the bed next below the underbed is crowded with 

 JStigmarice, though not more so towards the upper than in the lower 

 part. In Stigmaria-beds next but one below a coal-seam I have 

 noticed several examples of that fossil standing erect, in a manner 

 showing them to have been in all probability independent organisms. 

 But when JStigmarice occur in the underd^s the result of my inves- 

 tigations shows that they do not pass upwards into the coal. Only 

 once or twice have I detected anything like such fossil roots running 

 from the coal into the clay below *, and therefore my conclusion is 

 that instances of this phenomenon are exceedingly rare. On refer- 

 ring to the writings of Binney, Brown, Dawson, l)e la Beche, Green, 

 Hawkshaw, Lesquereux, Logan, Lyell, Macfarlane, Nicholson, AVil- 

 liamson, and others, I have failed to discover in them one single 

 description of an actual bond fide erect fossil tree with its Stigmarian 

 roots attached to it and imbedded in the under •day , whilst the stem en- 

 tered or passed through the overlying coal-seam. Now, surely if coal- 

 beds have been formed from trees and other plants whose roots grew 

 in or penetrated the underclays or so called " old soils," unmistakable 

 indications of their former existence ought to be present in great 

 abundance ; these roots must also have been more thickly matted 

 together the nearer they approached the coal ; and instead of there 

 being, as there is, a most distinct break between the base of a coal- 

 seam and the underbed, we should expect to find the one gradually 

 changing into the other, as is so frequently exemplified in the 

 junction of a peat-bed with the clay below it, where the roots can 

 be clearly seen communicating with the vegetable mass above. 

 Had instances of Stigmaria actually trending from the coal into the 

 underbed been met with, we should undoubtedly have been long since 

 furnished with exact particulars, locality &c, of such discoveries -f\ 

 Stigmaria ficoides, then, so far as my investigations have gone, does 

 not occur in the underclays as the fossil roots of trees, but rather, 

 it would seem, as plants sui generis. 



c. It would seem that the very significant fact of erect fossil tree- 

 stems with jStigmaria-ioots attached in situ being of so exceedingly 

 rare occurrence just where they ought to be most common, namely, 

 immediately below the bottom of a coal-seam, must obviously upset 

 the theory which has been based upon the inference that because coal 

 is probably largely made up of the remains of forest trees whose roots 



* At the fireclay mines of Messrs. Ensor & Co., on Ashby Wolds ; also at 

 Aldridge Colliery, Walsall, where I am informed that Stigmaria penetrated a 

 coal-seam and extended into the floor below. The roots in this instance pro- 

 ceeded from an erect fossil stem standing upon a 3-foot bed of coal. — W. S. Gr. 



f Moreover, even supposing for a moment that the roots of the coal-forest 

 trees, &c, did really grow in the underbeds, by what possible subsequent process 

 can all the carbon have become concentrated at one exact level, namely, where 

 the clay ceases and the coal-seam begins ? Not a single example of a fossil tree 

 (so far as I know) has ever been met with in which the roots were composed 

 of clay or shale, and the stump of coal. 



