''jLSwInSriT^^^^^^^ PKOCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 63 
united to a cone or spike resembling ttat of the Lycopods. He states 
that nothing was known of the age of the deposits from which the 
three specimens above named came except the last, and of course this 
gave little evidence of the true age of the fossil, which was found in 
drift. Now this information I am able to supply, having obtained 
some years since a beautiful specimen in all respects exactly similar 
to Dr. Brown's, from the Koof mine lying immediately over the 
Gannister seam in the lower part of the Lancashire coal-field; so 
there is no doubt whatever that the fossil cone is of carboniferous 
age. Mr. 0. Baily, in a letter addressed to Mr. Brockbank, states that 
the chief portion of the vegetation referred to in his, Mr. Brockbank's, 
paper " On the Haematite Iron Ores of Whitehaven," consists of dark- 
coloured fragments of the stems of a dicotyledonous plant which seem 
to have been broken sharply off while growing in situ. They have 
the general appearance of rotten sticks, and in their fresh condition 
are very soft and friable, yielding readily to the knife, but with expo- 
sure to the air they dry, and become much harder. They appear to 
have belonged to a shrubby plant of no great size, the stems of which 
would range between half and three-quarters of an inch in diameter. 
The internal portion of the stems has almost entirely disappeared, and 
in the few fragments examined, there are no traces of any woody 
layers, medullary rays, or central pith. The portions preserved con- 
sist of true bark, which is made up of two layers : — an exterior layer, 
or periderm, which is in a good state of preservation ; and an interior 
fibrous portion or liber, made up of short rectangular cells, which 
form layers of considerable thickness. All the woody fragments 
examined belonged to aerial portions of the plant, but there are no 
remains of the leaves borne by these stems, and it would be very 
desirable that they should be sought for in the lower portion of the 
overlying clay, as they would be very helpful towards determining 
the species. If a conjecture might be hazarded from the nature of 
the fragments examined as to the particular plant of which they 
formed a part, I should refer them to some species of Betula (birch). 
There was a single piece of woody matter looking like the rhizome 
of a fern, but the presence of scalariform tissue failed to be detected 
in it, and the fragment was too small to draw a definite conclusion 
from. Intermixed with the stems referred to above are the leaves of 
some cryptogamous plant, like those of a Hypnum, and formed of 
square-shaped transparent cells ; and embedded in the earthy portions 
which make up the remainder of the mass are a few well-preserved 
threadlike roots, which are white in colour, cylindrical in shape, only 
slightly branched, and containing well-defined vessels. 
At the meeting of this Society (Nov. 3rd), Professor W. 0. 
Williamson made some important remarks on the structure of the 
calamite from the upper coal-measures, represented in Fig. 478 of 
Lyell's Manual (6th edition). He pointed out the existence of one 
calamite within another, the former representing the pith and the 
latter the exterior of the bark, the pith and bark being separated by a 
well-defined woody zone. This woody zone consists of a series of 
tissues radiating, as in the recent conifersB, from the pith to the bark ; 
