C 579 ] 
XI. A Description of some Fossil Plants , showing Structure , found in the Lower Coal- 
seams of Lancashire and Yorkshire. By E. W. Binney, F.B.S. 
Received May 12, — Read June 15, 1865. 
Introductory Bernards. 
Although great attention has been devoted to the collection of the fossil remains of 
plants with which our coal-fields abound, the specimens are generally in very frag- 
mentary and distorted conditions as they occur imbedded in the rocks in which they are 
entombed ; but when they have been removed, cut into shape, and trimmed, and are seen 
in cabinets, they are in a far worse condition. This is as to their external forms and 
characters. When we come to examine their internal structure, and ascertain their true 
nature, we find still greater difficulties, from the rarity of specimens at the same time 
displaying both the external form and the internal structure of the original plant. 
It is often very difficult to decide which is the outside, different parts of the stem 
dividing and exposing varied surfaces which have been described as distinct genera of 
plants. 
The specimens were collected by myself, and taken out of the seams of coal just as 
they occurred in the matrix in which they were found imbedded, by my own hands. 
This enables me to speak with certainty as to the condition and locality in which they 
were met with. 
By the ingenuity of the late Mr. Nicol of Edinburgh, we were furnished with a 
beautiful method of slicing specimens of fossil-wood so as to examine their internal 
structure. The late Mr. Witham, assisted by Mr. Nicol, first applied this successfully, 
and his work on the internal structure of fossil vegetables was published in 1833. In 
describing his specimens, he notices one which he designated Anabathra pulcherrima. 
This did not do much more than afford evidence of the internal vascular cylinder 
arranged in radiating series, somewhat similar to that which had been found and 
described by Messrs. Lindley and Hutton as occurring in Stigmaria fcoides, in their 
third volume of the 4 Fossil Flora.’ 
In 1839 M. Adolphe Brongniart published his truly valuable memoir, “Observations 
sur la structure interieure du Sigillaria elegans comparee a celle des Lepidodendron et 
des Stigmaria et a celle des vegetaux vivants.” His specimen of Sigillaria elegans was 
in very perfect preservation, and showed its external characters and internal structure in 
every portion except the pith and a broad part of the plant intervening betwixt the 
internal and external radiating cylinders. Up to this time nothing had been seen at 
all to be compared to Brongni art’s specimen, and no savant could have been better 
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