604 
Notes . 
the plant tissues — how they ran, whether one nodule was coincident 
with its neighbour (that is, if the tissues in the one nodule ran on into 
the next), and if the tissues of one nodule ran parallel with those 
of a succeeding nodule either higher or lower in the seam. In that 
object I have been very successful, as the specimens will show. 
During these investigations it has been gradually forced on me that, 
at least in this case, these plant remains have not grown on the spot 
where we now find them, and for the following reasons: — In one 
nodule out of a number which were joined together by the surrounding 
coal we have a portion of a transverse section of Stigmaria , about 
one-half the whole section; and in the nodule adjoining to the right 
there is no portion of this Stigmaria whatever, but a fragment of 
a longitudinal section of Amyelon radio am and Stigmarian rootlets. 
In the one to the right above it there is still no part of it, and in the 
one to the left we have no part of it either. It is so with the various 
masses I have examined. Some we have which have contained 
nothing but Stigmarian rootlets ; their neighbours would contain 
Lyginodendron , Rachiopteris bibradensis, and so on, in short ' pieces ; 
another, Stigmarian rootlets, with a short piece of Lepidodendron 
fuliginosum , which could not be seen from the outside of the nodule, 
but was totally enveloped by the rootlets ; and so on. 
If these plants had grown on the spot where we now find them, 
and been petrified, we should have certainly found, where we had an 
abundance of nodules, that these stems would have been continued 
from nodule to nodule ; but that is not so. What we find is a 
quantity of fragments of short pieces of stems, &c., some with the 
cortex, some without, some split in fragments, and so on. The 
natural conclusion is that the various portions of plants have been 
carried into their present position after being broken in fragments, 
and before petrifaction, or they have been carried from a parent bed 
after petrifaction. 
Bolton. 
JAMES LOMAX. 
