Fig. 5. A vertical section of one of the "_Petrified Melons_" from Mount Carmel. The fossil thus named by Mr. Parkinson appears to be merely a siliceous nodule, having a cavity lined with quartz crystals. There is, however, a legend rife among the barefooted friars of Mount Carmel, that has conferred a celebrity on these stones; it runs, that "on this spot was a garden well stocked with melons, and that the prophet Elias, who founded the monastery, once asking the gardener for one of his melons, he with churlish humour answered, they were not melons but stones: on which they were immediately changed into stones, and so remain to this day." Figs. 6 & 7. Unknown vegetable fossils, highly metallic; fig. 6 appears to be a fragment of a cone. Figs. 8 & 9, are nodules of pyrites, accidentally assuming the form of fungi; they are not fossils, but simply masses of inorganic mineral matter. Fig. 10. Portion of the flattened stem of an extinct plant, from the coal measures of Yorkshire, whose affinities are uncertain; supposed to resemble the Yew-tree. It appears to be similar to the fossil named _Knorria taxina_ by Messrs. Lindley and Hutton in the British Fossil Flora. In that beautiful work,--the continuation of which is much to be desired,--the genus _Knorria_ comprises those fossil stems in which the projecting scars of the petioles are densely arranged in a spiral manner.[15] [Footnote 15: Medals of Creation, vol. i. p. 161.] [Illustration: Plate X.] PLATE X. (Plates X. to XXXIV. inclusive, are from Artis's work on the Fossil Remains of Plants, from the coal formations of Great Britain.) "Columnar Hydatica." Under the name _Hydatica_, Mr. Artis has described two species of fossil plants, from the coal-mine near Wentworth, Yorkshire. The originals appear to have been aquatic plants, having a horizontal or creeping stem, sending up slender branches, which floated by their leaves on the surface of the water. The generic characters are, "Stem, arborescent, jointed, branched; leaves, long, linear." In the arrangements of Schlotheim and Brongniart, who consider only the construction of the leaves, these plants would belong to the genus _Poacites_. The species figured is named _Hydatica columnaris_, or Columnar Hydatica. The stem is branched all the way up, and ends in a club-like head; the branches are numerous, simple, alternate, and covered with parallel hair-like leaves. Fig. 1. The plant of the natural size, imbedded in coal-shale; fig. 2, a branch magnified, showing; the two linear series in which the leaves are arranged. [Illustration: Plate XI.] PLATE XI. "Prostrate Hydatica."