ME. E. W. BINNEY ON SOME LOWEE-COAL-SEAM FOSSIL PLANTS. 
589 
guished savant supposed. Certainly there is no evidence in my specimens to support 
the latter view. A great many specimens have been broken up and destroyed for the 
purpose of examining the inner radiating cylinder, and in every case medullary rays or 
bundles were found traversing it, just as you find in the same part of Stigmaria. On 
the outside of the inner cylinder, at the extreme part of the zone of coarse and lax 
cellular tissue which bounds it, are some circular openings, from which spring the wedge- 
shaped masses of quadrangular, tubular, or elongated utricles which form the outer 
radiating cylinder. The lax cellular tissue has nearly always been displaced and dis- 
arranged in the process of mineralization, and sometimes the outer radiating cylinder 
and the circular orifices connected with it have been pushed towards the inner cylinder. 
This may have been the case in Brongniart’s specimen, and caused him to suppose 
that the medullary rays or bundles originated only on the outside, and were not joined 
to those which traversed the inner cylinder. So far as my large specimens show, there 
were medullary rays which had their origin next the central axis, passed through the 
inner cylinder, and after traversing the zone of lax cellular tissue outside the latter, 
apparently communicated with similar rays or bundles of vessels of much larger size, 
which are always found traversing the outer radiating cylinder, and then went on to the 
leaves on the outside of the stem. 
In Brongniart’s specimen the tubes or elongated utricles composing the outer 
radiating cylinder appear to have been far more delicate in structure than the thick- 
walled tubes in specimens Nos. 2 & 3*, but probably not more so than might be 
expected from the difference in size of the plants, my specimens being about twelve 
times as large as his, and in all probability so much older individuals. The tubes in 
mine might easily be mistaken for similar tubes in Pinites if their size and the thickness 
of their walls were merely considered, and no notice were taken of the discigerous 
characters of that genus. In my specimens no disks have as yet been observed on the 
walls of the tubes, nor have they afforded any evidence of the transverse striae which 
characterize the tubes of the central axis and internal radiating cylinder. It is possible 
that these markings may have once existed on the walls of the tubes, and been after- 
wards obliterated during the process of mineralization. The thick walls of the tubes 
in my specimens often exhibit circular dots of a yellow colour, bearing some resem- 
blance to coloured disks. The absence of the disks is the only reason for distinguishing 
the outer tissue in my specimens from the woody portion of Pinites , and this absence 
of disks is sometimes found to prevail on the walls of the tubes of small specimens of 
Dadoxylon , which are found with piths of Sternbergia inside them. 
The late Mr. J. E. Bowman, F.G.S., in his paper on the Fossil Trees discovered on the 
line of the Bolton Railway, near Manchester f, and which were in all probability old 
Sigillarice , at considerable length endeavoured to prove that they were hard-wooded 
solid timber trees, in opposition to the then common opinion that they were soft or 
* In the longitudinal section represented in the Plates these tubes are made more delicate than they appear 
in the specimens. 
f Transactions of the Manchester Geological Society, vol. i. p. 112. 
5 l 2 
