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paraffine, and were of the same yellowish brown colour as 
powdered Boghead coal, and that the latter substance was 
composed nearly altogether of microspores and mineral 
matter. So far as his observations extended, microspores had 
not been observed in coal, although plenty of macrospores, 
which are generally 2V th to 2h th of an inch in diameter, and 
easily seen by the naked eye, had long been noticed. 
He had some time since directed his friend Mr. J. W. 
Kirkby, of the Pirnie Coal Company, to examine the Fife- 
shire seams of coal in search of microspores, most of those 
beds yielding macrospores in great abundance, and that 
gentleman had lately furnished him with the specimens now 
exhibited, both splint and soft coals, but especially the 
former, affording the two kinds of spores. On burning the 
yellow coal comj)osed of microspores, a most brilliant dame 
and a peculiar empyreurnatic odour like that from burning 
Boghead coal were produced, whilst the splint coal full of 
macrospores only burnt and smelt like ordinary hard coal, 
thus clearly showing that these two kinds of spores differed 
very much in their inflammable properties and odours given 
off, and that such properties were certainly not due to the 
larger spores but most probably to the smaller ones. 
The compressed lenticular bodies in the splint coal were 
formerly of oval and spherical forms with a triradiate ridge 
on one half, and although their exterior was composed of a 
brown coriaceous substance, their interior was full of white 
carbonate of lime or bisulphide of iron according to the 
nature of the matrix in which they were found ; thus sug- 
gesting the idea of their having been filled with granules of 
starch when in a living state, which it is probable they 
would have been in case of their being germinating spores. 
He and his late partners at Bathgate, when manufacturing 
paraffine oil there, had tried various means, by subjecting 
Boghead coal to the action of ethers and naphthas, to 
dissolve out paraffine from it, but they had never succeeded. 
