19G 
Tin; FOSSIL FLORA. 
Could it be possible for these plants, of a yielding fleshy substance, 
with numerous arms proceeding on all sides from a central dome, to 
be floated from the dry land, and buried in the mud of an estuary, 
without being broken and squeezed—the extent of the out-stretched 
arms, when perfect, having been at least twenty to thirty feet P If 
they had been so floated, they must of necessity, in sinking down 
upon the muddy surface, have become flattened, and could not have 
presented the convex form we now find them invariably in. The 
leaves, also, which thickly surrounded the arms, could not, under any 
circumstances, even supposing them to have been hard woody spines, 
(which they assuredly were not,) have taken the direction in which 
we now find them, proceeding from the stem on all sides at right an¬ 
gles to its axis, and penetrating the shale, even perpendicularly up 
and down, to the extent of two or three feet, at least; had the plants 
been floated, the leaves, on the contrary, must of necessity have been 
pressed upon the arms, surrounding which we should have found 
their remains, in confused masses, and spread out irregularly by 
their side, in the plane of the surface on which the plant had finally 
reposed; none of this, however, takes place; but, on the contrary, 
when the shale is split, so as to expose the surface of the fossil, the 
leaves are seen proceeding, with the greatest regularity, each from 
its separate tubercle, those only being distinct in the length and 
breadth, which, when in a growing state, had been shot out in the 
plane which is now the cleavage of the shale. (See plates 32 and 
33, vol. 1.) 
From all these circumstances, we are compelled to conclude, that 
these Stigmariae were not floated from a distance, but that, on the 
contrary, they grew on the spots where we now find their remains, 
in the soft mud, most likely, of still and shallow water. It is worthy 
of observation, that the fossil remains of a Unio, (undescribed,) oc¬ 
cur, in considerable abundance, associated with the Stigmariae, but, 
in a shale, which forms the covering of the high main coal in the 
same colliery; and about forty-five fathoms above tbe Stigmaria bed, 
as we may very appropriately designate it, there is, in one spot, a 
considerable accumulation of this same fossil Unio ; the coal has 
been worked out under the layer of shells, in all directions, and they 
are found to cover an area of 5000 square feet. The shells are partly 
embedded in the coal itself, (which is spoiled by them,) and partly 
in the shale above it; the bed is about eighteen inches thick; the 
animals have, evidently, died at various ages; and the shells of all 
sizes, are, many of them, gaping open. As it is impossible to con¬ 
ceive these, consisting of one species only, to have been brought 
