14 
which the rootlets of Stigmaria have penetrated every- 
“ thing within their reach which was penetrable, and I have 
“ no doubt that in both Professor Goeppert and Mr. Binney’s 
“ specimens these supposed medullary vessels were really 
Stigmarian rootlets that had found their way into the 
“ interior of the cavity left by the decay of the medulla and 
been mistaken for a part of the plant into which they had 
intruded themselves.” Now in his (Mr. Binney’s) Staf- 
fordshire specimen described in the Quarterly Journal of 
the Geol. Society for 1850, p. 77, mention is only made of 
the large vascular bundles found in the axis without calling 
them vascular or any other vessels. As figured in the plate 
and described in the letterpress no one could scarcely take 
them for the radicles of Stigmaria. The woody cylinder 
was one of those having the inner parts of their vascular 
circle close together and not open as in Professor Goeppert’s 
specimen. It is certainly possible that the large tubes in 
his specimen may not be in their normal condition and may 
have been somewhat altered in the process of mineralization, 
but it is very improbable that they had ever been intro- 
duced into the axis after the pith had been removed. 
The beautiful specimen figured and described by Goep- 
pert more than thirty years since is very different from his 
(Mr. Binney’s), being much more open in the spaces between 
the wedges of the woody cylinder, and its central part is 
enclosed in a Stigmo.ria, shewing the external characters in 
a most excellent state of preservation, and one of the best 
that has ever been found. However it might be urged that 
the vascular bundles in the medulla had been squeezed 
from their true position into the parts where they are now 
found, they are certainly not intruded rootlets, as any one 
who examines the learned author’s plate can satisfy himself. 
For many beautiful specimens of Stigmaria, shewing 
structure in most of their parts except the medulla from the 
trap ashes of Scotland, he was indebted to the kindness of 
Messrs. Wunsch, John Young, and Greive. 
He had been so fortunate as to find a specimen of Stig- 
maria, which he now exhibited to the Society, from the 
I 
