Plantæ

There is no class of our carboniferous fossils in which so little work has been done as in the plant-remains, either in the way of collecting or having them properly determined. This neglect in many cases may be owing to the bulky condition in which many of them are found in the strata, and which forbids their being secured as cabinet specimens. Not many collectors are tempted to shoulder a portion of the trunk of a Sigillaria or a Lepidodendron, say one or two feet in diameter and three or four feet in length, however well preserved the specimen may be. If secured at all, such specimens are generally found to be fit only for museum display, and not for private collections. Neither would any one think of breaking up such stems into smaller portions, as the beauty and interest of fossil plants consist in a great measure (where the internal structure has not otherwise been preserved) in the entirety of the external form of the specimens. Large specimens of plants are therefore often allowed to go to decay in the shale-heaps at the pits or in the quarries where they have been exhumed, owing to the difficulty of carrying them away into places of security. The poor state of preservation in which plant-remains are met with in many strata does not tempt collectors to secure them for their cabinets or for future examination, even although new and rare forms may thereby be overlooked. There are, however, a few localities This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract