151 
on the east Coast of England. 
stances in more distant countries. Some of the impressions or 
remains of plants found in soils of this nature, which were, by 
more ancient and less enlightened oryctologists, supposed to 
belong to plants actually growing in temperate and cold cli- 
mates, seem, on accurate investigation, to have been parts of 
exotic vegetables. In fact, whether we suppose them to have 
grown near the spot where they are found, or to have been 
carried thither from different parts, by the force of an impelling 
flood, it is equally difficult to conceive, how organized beings, 
which, in order to live, require such a vast difference in tem- 
perature and in seasons, could live on the same spot, or how 
their remains could (from climates so widely distant) be brought 
together to the same place, by one common dislocating cause. 
To this ancient order of fossil vegetables belong whatever 
retains a vegetable shape, found in or near coal mines, and 
(to judge from the places where they have been found) the 
greater part of the agatized woods. But, from the species and 
present state of the trees which are the subject of this Me- 
moir, and from the situation and nature of the soil in which 
they are found, it seems very clear that they do not belong to 
this primeval order of vegetable ruins. 
The second order of fossil vegetables, comprehends those 
which are found in strata of clay or sand ; materials which are 
the result of slow depositions of the sea or of rivers, agents 
still at work under the present constitution of our planet. 
These vegetable remains are found in such flat countries as 
may be considered to be of a new formation. Their vegetable 
organization still subsists, at least in part ; and their vegetable 
substance has suffered a change only in colour, smell, or con- 
