the Royal Society of Edinburgh, April 1862, vol. iv. p. 577.) MODE OF PRESERVATION OF FOSSIL PLANTS. The mode in which plants are preserved in a fossil state may be referred to four principal classes:--1. Casts of the plants; from which all the original substance and structure have been removed subsequently to the burial of the plants, and to the greater or less induration of the rocks in which they are entombed. Such casts are occasionally hollow, but more frequently they consist of the amorphous substance of the rock which has filled up the cavity, and which exhibits, often with remarkable minuteness, the external aspects of the original specimen. 2. Carbonisation; in which the original substance of the plant has been chemically altered and converted into lignite or coal. All trace of the form of the original plant is generally lost, as is the case with the extensive beds of coal; but frequently, when the organism has been buried in a bed of clay, the external appearance is faithfully preserved, as in the ferns and other foliage found in the shales of the coal-measures. 3. Infiltration; in which the vegetable tissues, though carbonised, retain their original form from the infiltration of some mineral in solution, chiefly lime or silex, which has filled the empty cells and vessels, and so preserved their original form. This mode of preservation occurs in the calcareous nodules in coal-beds, in the remarkable ash-beds discovered by Mr. Wünsch in Arran, and generally in the secondary rocks. 4. Petrifaction; in which the structure is preserved, but the whole of the original substance has been replaced, atom for atom, by an inorganic substance, generally lime, silex, or some ore of iron. This is the condition of the beautiful fossils from Antigua, and of many stems and fruits from rocks of all ages in Britain.