590 
ME. E. W. BINNEY ON SOME LOWEE-COAL-SEAM FOSSIL PLANTS. 
hollow stems. In my company that author first saw the trees, and he then observed 
to me that the roots of those fossil trees clearly indicated by their great size and strength 
that the trees when living had heavy tops. 
In all the numerous specimens of large Sigillaria which have come under my obser- 
vation, the outer radiating cylinder shows more or less evidence of lines of growth, and 
is generally divided into rectangular masses parted by straight lines of sparry matter, 
just as a piece of oak taken out of a peat bog and dried does at the present day. This 
similarity in divisional structure strongly supports the view of the late Mr. Bowman as 
to Sigillaria being a hard-wooded tree, which has lately been revived by Dr. Dawson, 
F.R.S., in his paper “ On the Vegetable Structures of Coal,” who says, “ I am even 
inclined to suspect that some of the described specimens of Conifers of the coal may be 
the woody axes of large Sigillaria?, or at least approaching quite as nearly to those 
plants as to modern Conifers”*. All the large specimens of fossil trees found in seams 
of coal give evidence of having been subject to considerable pressure when in a soft 
state, and this might also cause the divisional lines above alluded to, without resorting 
to a process like that which takes place in drying bog oak. 
In the specimens Nos. 2 & 3 the outer radiating cylinders are nearly an inch and 
a half in breadth of thick-walled tubes, or elongated utricles arranged in radiating 
series, and diverging from a circular opening, while in Brongniart’s Sigillaria elegans 
the outer radiating cylinder was not more than -j^th of that breadth. Probably my 
specimens may not prove to be of the same species as that of the celebrated Autun 
specimen, still they may be of the same genus, although of considerably greater age. 
But they have the greatest resemblance to the Sigillaria vascularis described by me in 
a paper read before the Geological Society, and printed in its Journalf. All the speci- 
mens described in that communication, as well as those in the present one, were obtained 
by me from the same seam of coal, but at different places, still the two, namely, the 
large ribbed and furrowed specimens and the small rhomboidal scarred stems, are 
always found associated together, and they can be traced gradually passing from one into 
the other. These facts, when taken in connexion with the similarity of structure in the 
central axis, the internal radiating cylinder, the space filled with lax cellular tissue 
between the latter and the outer radiating cylinder diverging from circular openings, 
clearly prove that the smaller specimen is but the young branch of the older stem, No. 2. 
It is true that the earlier authors who have written on these plants, would scarcely have 
admitted a ribbed and furrowed Sigillaria to have been so intimately connected with 
a rhomboidal scarred plant, but it is now generally allowed that such differences in 
external characters would afford no grounds for ignoring the structural similarity of the 
specimens. Undoubtedly the small Sigillaria vascularis was part of a branching stem ; 
for in my cabinet there is a specimen clearly showing two internal radiating cylinders just 
at the point where the branches dichotomized, as shown in woodcut (fig. 2), so often met 
with in Lepidodendron. 
* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xv. p. 636. 
f Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for May 1862. 
