594 
ME. E. W. BINNEY ON SOME LOWER-COAL-SEAM EOSSIL PLANTS. 
posed of barred vessels, a space occupied by lax cellular tissue, and an outer radiating 
cylinder composed of tubes or elongated utricles. 
The broad space intervening between the internal and external radiating cylinders, 
filled with lax cellular tissue and traversed by medullary bundles communicating with 
the leaves on the outside of the stem, as shown in the specimens described in this paper, 
is the only part on which information is required to complete our knowledge of the 
structure of the stem of Sigillaria. Fortunately a small specimen of Sigillaria vascu- 
laris , kindly presented to me by Mr. Ward, of Longton, a most indefatigable collector, 
has enabled me to obtain considerable information on this point. This specimen shows 
the rhomboidal scars on the outside of the stem, the two radiating cylinders and the 
space between occupied by lax cellular tissue, and traversed by medullary bundles. 
The specimen in this woodcut (fig. 5, magnified twice) is of smaller Eig. 5. 
size than any previously described by me, but it is, from both its 
internal structure and external characters, a small Sigillaria vascu- 
laris in its young state, when the two radiating cylinders, especially 
the outer one of the plant, were only slightly developed. The 
medullary bundles are seen on the outside of the inner radiating 
cylinder, and pass, inclining upwards at a small angle, from the inner 
cylinder to nearly the outside of the stem. No trace of the outer 
cylinder can be seen, so as to enable us to see whether the smaller- 
sized medullary bundles coming from the inner cylinder join the 
larger ones in the outer cylinder, described in Plate XXXI Y. fig. 2, 
and there marked d'. All the tangential sections show the medul- 
lary bundles, both in large and small specimens, to be much greater 
and stronger in the outer than in the inner radiating cylinder ; but 
no evidence has yet been found of the junction of these medullary 
bundles to prove that the former run into the latter, or whether the 
two are distinct. They consist of hexagonal tubes, barred on all 
their sides, surrounded by muriform tissue, that on the outside of the 
specimen being of very coarse texture. 
Up to this time we possess little information as to the organs of fructification belong- 
ing to Sigillaria. In a paper many years since printed by me *, some Stigmarice were 
described which were found with their insides full of spores, resembling those which 
were found by Dr. Hooker in Lepidodendron. Similar spores are met with in great 
abundance in all the seams of splint coal which have been examined by me, the floors 
of which, it is well known, are one mass of Stigmarice. In the strata lying around the 
large Sigillaria found at Dixon Fold, described by the late Mr. J. E. Bowman^, that 
author says, “ they (the trees) lie in a stratum of soft shale about four feet thick, among 
which great quantities of nodules containing cones of Lepidostrobus, with pieces of Stig- 
marice, &c., were found.” 
* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. vi. p. 17. 
t Transactions of the Manchester Geological Society, vol. i. p. 113. 
