CASH & HICK: FLORA OF THE LOWER COAL MEASURES. 77 
preserved in form ; but no author could satisfactorily account 
for it, until the wonderful discoveries in Dialysis, by the late 
Professor Graham, F.R.S., showed us how crystalloids, such 
as carbonate of lime, could percolate through animal and 
vegetable membranes. It is probably by the laws of Dialysis 
that we shall be enabled to find out the process of the 
calcification of the specimens which occur in nodules from 
the Halifax Hard Seam. 
LOCALITIES. 
There are four pits in the Halifax district where plant 
remains from the Halifax Hard Seam have been collected. 
Two of those, Bank Top Pit and Sunny Bank Pit, are in 
Southowram ; one at Elland, near Halifax ; and the other, 
Sugden Pit, near Bradshaw. And here we would offer our 
hearty acknowledgments to our friend, Mr. James Binns, of 
Halifax, who has long worked hard in this field of research, 
and indeed has discovered most of the novelties which this 
district has yielded. Though one of those whose only college 
has been the university of Nature, and who, like Hugh 
Miller, has matriculated in a stone quarry, yet his fine 
powers of observation, trained by long and patient practical 
study of recent plants in the field, have enabled him to 
detect the analogies between fossil and existing forms ; and, 
joined to this, he has a rare manipulative skill in preparing 
sections of fossil plants for the microscope (a by no means 
easy task), which gives promise, we trust, of still further 
contributions from his hands to the fossil flora of the Halifax 
district. 
GENERA, ETC., OF PLANTS FOUND IN THE HALIFAX 
HARD BED. 
It is no part of our purpose in the present communication 
to enter upon any description of the structure of the Halifax 
fossil coal plants, but rather to furnish a list of the forms 
