200 The American Geologist. Ocu^bcr, i^y.i 
layer seems tO' be putting forth a shoot or sprout, be allowed. 
It will be observed tiiat the trend of the tissues in contact with 
or growing out of the rods is always parallel with the rods. 
Another point is that so far no specimen has turned up which 
reveals anything anatomically suggestive of rays, or offshoots 
in connection with the structures observed as pertaining to the 
rods, save the possible exception just mentioned. 
A special interest surrounds the specimen whose longitud- 
inal section is seen in fig. 25, pi. VIII. From a very careful 
examination of the lump of anthracite that contained this fossil 
it was evident that the entire specimen was embedded in it ; the 
object is therefore not a fragment of the specimen because it 
did not reach the surface of the piece of coal. Another re: son 
for concluding that in this specimen (fig. 25) we have an entire 
individual, is the fact that the same piece of coal contained 
other very similar specimens of the same plant, but owing to 
the obduracy of the material none of them were secured or st 
s tisfactorily fractured for examination as this one was. These 
individual fossils may be said to have been enclosed in the coal 
just as almonds are in a cake, but in the coal they lay parallel 
with the grain or bedding planes. So that whatever this is, 
it is not a fragment in the sense that it is only a portion of the 
original individual. .Fig. 20, pi. VIII, shows a transverse view 
of the general structure of this specimen. 
The smallness of this specimen (note the size of the rods as 
compared wdth those iigs. i to 17, pi. VII.) shows it to be a 
young plant ; and since it contains all of the essential charac- 
teristics of the structures observed in other specimens of the 
same plant possessing much larger rods, etc., the reasonable 
inference is that the matured individuals did not differ in kind 
or variety of elements and tissues, but merely differed as to their 
outward forms and dimensions. I presume that as the rods 
progressed in growth they also developed changes and differ- 
ences in structure. That this plant may have possessed lobes 
or expansions, notwithstanding no signs of anything, ap- 
proaching branches, roots, etc., is known, is reasonable to sup- 
pose. That all these observed rods belonged to such form as 
this is altogether too much to presume, for many of them 
would indicate vegetable structures referable to much higher 
