15 
Bullion coal at Clough Head, near Burnley, having the 
medulla perfectly preserved. It is about two inches in 
diameter, and shews the inner bark composed of elongated 
utricles in radiating series and traversed by bell-shaped 
orifices, containing the bases of the rootlets, the zone of lax 
cellular tissue, and the woody cylinder of close wedges 
surrounding the central axis or medulla. Distinct evidence 
of both the large primary and the small secondary medul- 
lary rays is found in the tangential section of the woody 
cylinder exactly resembling those met with in the fossil 
plant described by him as Sigillaria vascularis. The sharp 
line of a dark colour separating the vascular cylinder from 
the central axis is the same in both plants, and the outer 
portion of the axis is formed of small vascular tubes of hex- 
agonal and pentagonal forms, which gradually increase in 
size as they proceed inwards, and form something like a 
medullary sheath enclosing a medulla composed of very 
small and short barred tubes or utricles in which are mingled 
large vascular tubes or utricles, the latter being about 15 
times the diameter of the former. 
The size of these large vascular tubes or utricles in the 
medulla exceeding anything, so far as his knowledge 
extended, hitherto observed in fossil plants shews that it 
was easily decomposed, and thus accounts for the general 
absence of the medulla in Sigillaria and its roots. Every 
part of this specimen is identical in structure with the plant 
named by him Sigillaria vascularis, so if that is sufS.cient 
evidence of the connection of a stem with a root, it must be 
taken to be the root of that plant. One thing is certain 
that the large vascular tubes or utricles in the medulla 
existed in the living plant and are not the intruded rootlets 
of Stigmaria. 
Mr. R. D. Darbishire, F.G.S., exhibited and described 
the Palgeolithic (French and English Drift) Implements 
collected for the Soirde at the Owens College. 
O 
Professor Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., brought before the notice 
