126 
ORGANIC REMAINS. 
Flabellaria ? viminea ... ... PL X. fig. 12. 
Seed of a cycadites ? ... ... fig. 5 , 
Seed vessel. — 1. (Young and Bird, PI. I. fig. l. on the left) 
2. (Young and Bird, PI. I. fig. 7.) 
3. (Young and Bird, PI. I. fig. 2.) 
Saltwick, and in the upper 
carbonaceous shale. 
Haiburn Wyke. 
Saltwick. 
Ditto. 
Hawsker, in sandstone. 
Of the last three specimens, which are in the museum of the 
Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, I transmitted drawings to 
INI. A. Brongniart, along with several other representations of species 
contained in the above list, which were not in the museum of the York- 
shire Philosophical Society, when he examined its contents in 1825. 
The above catalogue contains about twenty species of monocotyledo- 
nous plants, of which seven appear to me to be identical with as many 
which have been previously mentioned as occurring above the Cave 
oolite. One has been found in the slaty stone at Stonesfield ; one at Brora, 
in Sutherland ; and in several rocks probably of about the same antiquity 
on the continent ; but none in the more ancient coal measures associated 
with the mountain limestone, nor in the more recent lignites which 
belong to strata above the chalk. The result of all accurate inquiries 
into the nature and distribution of fossil plants, is, that they consist of 
three great distinct groups of species, which occupy as many peculiar 
repositories in the series of secondary strata : one group lies above the 
chalk ; another is included between the chalk and the lias ; and a third 
occupies the coal measures and mountain limestone. A cursory observer 
may, perhaps, be led to confound together the ferns and calamites of the 
coal district with the ferns and equiseta of the oolitic rocks, though to 
a botanical eye their difference is very apparent : but who can mistake 
the lepidodendra of the former, the cycadiform fronds of the middle 
period, and the dicotyledonous leaves and fruits which abound above the 
chalk ? Many interesting inquiries connected with this subject, as the 
temperature and condition of the earth, when these plants flourished 
upon its surface, their inhumation beneath vast deposits of marine shells, 
and their subsequent conversion to coal of different chemical properties, 
must here be left unexplored ; but I cannot avoid calling the attention of 
