195 
DESCRIPTION OF THE FOSSILS. 
coalfield, and with Mr. Smith’s minute distinctions between the members 
of the Bath oolite formation; but these local truths lose their force 
when applied to other districts. Geologists, and especially those who 
describe particular tracts of country, do not sufficiently keep in view 
the distinction of local facts depending on limited geographical cir- 
cumstances, and general phenomena caused by extensively uniform con- 
ditions in the ancient world. Yet on this distinction rests the difference 
between the knowledge of his art possessed by a miner, collier, and 
quarryman, and the science which it is the business of a geologist to 
advance. That the same species of plants are repeated in many stages 
of the coal measures is fully ascertained by Mr. Hutton’s researches 
in the Newcastle coalfield, and my late friend Mr. E. S. George of 
Leeds and myself vainly tried to arrive at a different conclusion with 
regard to the Yorkshire coalfield. We shall find similar results in 
surveying the other classes of organic remains. 
Marine plants are almost unknown in any of the North of England 
carboniferous deposits older than new red sandstone, though one has 
been noticed by Dr. Thompson (Report of British Association, 1834), in 
a coal deposit near Glasgow. 
Very few, and those perhaps doubtful, purely aquatic plants have 
been seen by any observers in these strata; it is indeed imagined by 
Steinhauer, and the opinion is countenanced by Lindley and Hutton, 
and partially by Brongniart, that stigmaria was a repent subaqueous or 
mud plant, and the dissected fibres of myriopliyllites of Artis certainly 
remind us of submersed vegetation. 
REMAINS OF ZOOPHYTA cuv. 
Few of the mountain limestone districts of England are deficient in 
remains of corals, crinoidea, &c., whether as in Derbyshire and Mendip 
we contemplate one (the lower) thick mass of calcareous rock, or as in 
the north-west of Yorkshire and in Northumberland examine the thinner 
portions which alternate with shales, gritstones, kc. In the latter dis- 
ci c 2 
