120 
nic matter, unable to find issue, has produced these inflated masses. There are 
numberless faults in this coal-field to which no reference is made, it being stated 
that much additional labour is required to give a complete history of them; but 
attention is called to the Birch Hill, Lanesfield, and Barrow Hill faults, which are 
the principal transverse faults, and which the author conceives may be explained 
upon the principles of the theory of Mr. Hopkins, or as cross fractures which 
have resulted from elevation of the coal-field en masse. 
The memoir concludes with referring to the importance of one of the problems 
to which the author has been directing public attention during the last few years, 
viz., the probable extension of carboniferous tracts of the central counties beneath 
the surrounding new red sandstone ; and he rejoices that the deductions which 
necessarily follow from his observations in this and the adjacent coal-fields, have 
recently been so ably supported by the masterly observations of Mr. Prestwich 
upon Coalbrook Dale, with whose opinions he entirely coincides. 
The quantity, therefore, of unwrought coal beneath the new red sandstone of 
Shropshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, &c., though previously omitted in sta¬ 
tistical data, must form an element in all calculations concerning the probable 
duration of the carboniferous wealth of the empire. 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST. 
Medicinal Plants applied to Vegetation. 
There is an expression used by Gardeners; .namely, that “ plants draw up 
plants,” which would seem to indicate that plants do reciprocally affect each other, 
and that the fact is admitted. A gentleman once told me that a choice exotic, 
exposed sub die , flowered in winter, and though surprised by frost, suffered no 
injury; but this resistance he attributed to a dose of brandy which he administer¬ 
ed to the plant! Be this as it may, there is one extraordinary fact which I have 
verified by direct experiment: I had read somewhere of the sanative or healing 
effects of Chamomile on some particular plants ; but I confess I treated the state¬ 
ment as fanciful. The remarkable effects of the revivification of a plant, appa¬ 
rently dying, by placing two small pots of Chamomile beneath its branches, and 
pointed out to me in a gentleman’s garden at Leicester, induced me to apply the 
curious remedy to several plants, as China Roses, a shrubby Calceolaria and 
