/ 
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the plant appears to have differed so much from any thing which we 
now know, as to leave us without the opportunity of deriving any 
aid from analogy, and but little from comparison. The variety in 
the shape, size, and disposal of the tubercles on the surface of this 
fossil, appears to be sufficient, to warrant the supposition that the 
genera and species of this unknown family must have been very 
numerous. Unable to find sufficient points of correspondence be- 
tween it, and any plant which is now known to exist, we must be 
satisfied, with Dr. Woodward, whose opportunities for judgment, 
from the multitude of his specimens, perhaps exceeded those of any 
one else, to submit to leave it among the fossilia incognita. 
The specimen figured at Plate IX. Fig. 1, and which was obtained 
since the foregoing observations were committed to writing, seems 
to furnish, at least, another conjecture, respecting this extraordinary 
fossil. In this specimen, of itself highly interesting, is an oblong 
cylindrical body, which is curiously imbricated on its surface, evi- 
dently by the particular arrangement of squamce ; from which mem- 
branous productions, exceedingly thin, forming tubuli, pass directly 
inwards, in a perpendicular direction, to another body placed in 
the centre of the former. The external surface of this body is also 
imbricated in a somewhat similar manner, obviously from the regu- 
lar insertions of the terminations of the membranous productions, 
proceeding from the external squamce. A reference to the figure 
will show the external and internal imbricated sui’face, as well as 
the membranous productions, forming tubuli, by which both are 
connected ; manifesting this fossil to have been a strobilus, analo- 
gous in its organization, though different in its form, from anv at 
present known. 
From the perfect state of seclusion in which this body has been 
kept, by the close texture of the surrounding argillaceous iron-stone, 
its bituminization has been complete, so that all its parts have been 
preserved, and are now to be seen in their natural situation. But 
