BROWN-COAL AND LIGNITE. 
509 
To the same period probably belongs the Surtur- 
Wand of Iceland, (see Henderson’s Iceland, vol. 
ii- p. 1 14 .) and the well-known examples of Browai- 
coal on the Rhine near Cologne and Bonn, and 
of the Meisner mountain, and Habichtswald near 
Cassel. These formations occasionally contain 
the remains of Palms, and Professor Bindley has 
lately recognized, among some specimens found 
hy Mr. Horner in the Brown-coal near Bonn 
(See Ann. Phil. Bond. Sept. 183 . 3 , V. 3 , p. 222), 
leaves closely allied to the Cinnamomum of our 
niodern tropics, and to the Podocarpus of the 
Southern hemisphere.* 
* At Piitzberg near Bonn, six or seven beds of Brown-coal 
alternate with beds of sandy clay and plastic clay. The trees in 
the Brown-coal are not all parallel to the planes of the strata, 
hut cross one another in all directions, like the drifted trees now 
Accumulated in the alluvial plains, and Delta of the Mississippi; 
(see Lyell’s Geology, 3rd edit, vol i. p. 272.) some of them 
Are occasionally forced even into a vertical position. In one 
■''ertical tree at Piitzberg, which was three yards in diameter, 
M. Nbggerath counted 792 concentric rings. In these rings we 
have a chronometer, which registers the lapse of nearly eight 
r^enturies, in that early portion of the Tertiary period which gave 
hirth to the forests, that supplied materials for the formation of 
the Brown-coal. 
The fact mentioned by Faujas that neither roots, branches, or 
leaves are found attached to the trunks of trees in the Lignite at 
^fuld and Liblar near Cologne, seems to show that these trees 
d>d not grow on the spot, and that their more perishable parts 
have been lost during their transport from a distance. 
In the Brown-coal Formation near Bonn, and also with the 
^nrtnrbrand of Iceland, are found Beds that divide into Biminee 
