SALTER A CHRISTMAS LECTURE ON COAL 
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true structure of the Lepidodenclron and its seed ; and lias illustrated 
the fruit of these old fir-trees), suggested years ago, in the gallery 
of the Museum of Practical Geology, that the one supposed flower of 
the coal belonged to the fir tribe too. 
It is called AnthoUtes, and may, as he admits, certainly be what it 
was at first described to be — the flower spike of a plant not distantly 
related to the pine apple ! There are some prickly leaves (if they be 
not fern-stalks) in the coal-shales, which render this possible, — not, 
1 think, probable. 
But on the othor hand these 
so-called flowers have no very 
regular parts, and are not a bit 
like any living ones that I 
know. They look to me, as 
they did to Dr. Hooker when 
he first examined them, very 
like unfolding buds of Coni- 
ferae, with somewhat broader 
leaves than we are accustomed 
to see in modern firs or larch, 
but not broader than many of 
the yew tribe. As I do not 
know that the author I have 
named still holds the original 
opinion, I do not quote him 
for it; but only give my own.. 
Of the Cycas tribe, so abun- 
dant in oolitic times, a few re- 
presentatives occur. They are 
not characteristic of the coal, 
and are rare in England. We give a foreign specimen. 
And now a few grass-like plants, of whose nature we cannot say 
much, for want of the fructification, would end the series, had it not 
been known that they are fungi in the coal ! I know but little about 
them, and will therefore say less ; but there they are — three species. 
Of the animals of the coal I shall have a little to say next month, 
when I hope to finish this rather lengthy lecture. I am not tired of 
it myself, but our young readers may be. 
Cycadeous Plant (Pterophyllum), from the car- 
boniferous beds of the Altai Mountains. 
