6 
locked up in my cabinet and shown to no one ; so it puzzles 
me how Mr. Kendall can have exhibited the “so-called 
vegetable remains mentioned by Mr. Binney ” to Professor 
Williamson. 
On the table I have brought some of my specimens from 
Water Blain, and others from Cark, Lindal Moor, and dif- 
ferent places in Furness, kindly lent me by Mr. Swainson, 
of the Poplars, Ulverston, so that the members may judge 
for themselves whether they are the remains of plants or 
accidental forms, notwithstanding that they are now con- 
verted into good hsematite iron. 
The stems of fossil plants found in our coal measures are 
all in an altered condition; some have been calcified, others 
silicified, and frequently ferrified, or converted into haematite 
iron, bisulphide, or a carbonate of the protoxide of that 
metal, and we have to determine them more from their ex- 
ternal characters than from internal structure. On the 
table are exhibited specimens of fossil wood converted into 
peroxide of iron and silicate of alumina from the Smedley 
sandstone at Cheetham, near this city, a rock in the upper 
portion of the middle coal field. The vegetable origin of 
these have never been doubted, although little evidence is 
left of their external characters or internal structure. These 
red coloured specimens were first, probably, in a partly 
calcified state. The lime was afterwards dissolved out and 
the iron converted into a peroxide, the silica and the alu- 
mina remaining, and the fossils were thus altered into their 
present ochrey condition. The white specimens are com- 
posed of silicate of alumina and are mere pseudomorphs 
with probably slight traces of iron. 
From notes made by me in 18§6, the time I found the 
fossils, the ochrey and white ones were met with at the 
bottom of the sandstone in a stratum of soft argillaceous 
matter of a dark red colour, mixed with streaks of white. 
On clearing this away I observed a soft fibrous substance 
