On some Fossil Plants, showing Structure, from the Lower Coal-Measures of Lancashire

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Abstract
Of all the fossil plants found in the Coal-measures, probably none is more widely diffused, or its whole internal structure considered to be better known, than the genus Lepidodendron . The investigations of Messrs. Witham, Lindley and Hutton, Corda, Brongniart, and J. D. Hooker appeared to have almost exhausted the subject, so far as the structure of the stem was concerned. Dr. Hooker, after describing the double system of vessels in Stigmaria , first shown by Goeppert, and the consequent approach in this respect to the Diploxylon of Corda, says—“In Lepidodendron , again, there is the same double vascular system; but that from which the bundles arise, which proceed to the leaves, is placed externally to the wood, where it formed a continuous zone with a well-defined inner edge (in juxta-position with the outer circumference of the inner zone) and a sinuous outer edge from which the diverging bundles are given off.” He, as well as all the other authors before named, considered the pith of Lepidodendron to be composed of cellular tissue, and that it was surrounded by a zone of large barred vessels, of hexagonal shape, which was succeeded by a narrow circle of lesser hexagonal vessels, also barred on their sides. Then came the great mass of cellular tissue containing the bundles of vessels which traversed it, leading from the outer vascular cylinder to the leaves. This was succeeded by a radiated series of elongated utricles forming the outer bark of the tree. The whole of the structure, as above

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