124 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
The Sigillaria was a tall tree, with a bare tmnk regularly pitted by 
the leaf-scars. It branched at the sumniit, and bore long narrow leaves, 
as above said; its fruit is not known. Its internal structure has been 
examined in some very perfect specimens, by foreign and English bota- 
nists (fossil-botanists as some folks call them), — Brongniart, Hooker, 
Dawson, and others. It is a good deal like the Cycas, known in our 
green-houses as a Cape plant, but in some respects more like Ferns. 
Nor is there any living family of plants which tallies with it, though 
in a rough way it has been supposed by good judges to belong to the 
great tribe Coniferae — to which our fir-trees, pines, cedars, and junipers 
belong. Hooker regards it as nearer the club-mosses, and especially 
near to Lepidodendron. 
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Fig. 5.— Sigillaria.— Internal cast of 
stem, with portions of the bark, 
carbonised. 
Qf^v^ ^l^' ^-r^i^^^"^— the common coal-tree 
Stem, perhaps 15 feet high : with its roots Stigmaria) b- 
ihlhf^^^^'^''" 1 ^^"^ ^^^^^ ^ species, of which no less 
than fifteen are known in England alone. We have fioW wo 
of the more remarkable; and really they might be u'dirpaper- 
