The internal structure of fossil vegetables found in the carboniferous and oolitic deposits of Great Britain. Described and illustrated / By Henry T.M. Witham.

Witham, Henry T. M. (Henry Thornton Maire)

Date:: 1833

Credit: The internal structure of fossil vegetables found in the carboniferous and oolitic deposits of Great Britain. Described and illustrated / By Henry T.M. Witham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$gitudiiial sections, which will be found among the plates of the present work. At Lennel Braes in Berwickshire, fossil vegetables containing woody cellular structure are to he met with in the greatest abundance. Many of these plants appear to me to differ materially from the true Coniferae, some containing pith of much greater extent than is to be observed in either the stems or branches of any recent species of pine ; and although, in the hori- zontal section, presenting a regular system of apertures similar to those of pines, yet, in their longitudinal sections, exhibiting appearances differing in several essential respects. Numerous beautiful remains of stems of similar plants are found at Tweed Mill, on the north bank of that river. At High Heworth, Fel- lon, Gateshead, and Wideopen, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, large trunks have also been found. One discovered at the last-named place measured seventy-two feet in length. At Allen Bank in Berwickshire, we find shale exposed, containing large quantities of stems of fossil trees, many of which seem to have decayed, and to have subsequently been filled with fragments of various vegetables. To the west of the city of Durham, in a place which I have lately had an opportunity of examining, many plants resembling Coniferae are found in great profusion, not only in situ, hut lying scattered about in the fields, and in the various streams and rills that intersect this portion of the coun- try. The quarry which has afforded the greatest number of these fossils, is situated near Ushaw College, five miles west of Durham, ami lies near the Brass Thill seam mentioned by Mr Buddell, in the Transactions for 1831 of the Newcastle Natural History Society. In the roof of the Bensham coal-seam at Jarrow Colliery, upon the river Tyne, many specimens are found having an appearance very similar to that of the young shoots of the genus Piniis, and which ]\I. A. BiiONCi- NIART names Lepidostrobus ornatus, considering them as cones, the scales of which are terminated by rhomboidal disks imbricated from above down- wards. If, therefore, the argument that the combustible beds of our coal-fields$