The organic remains found in the coal strata rival those of the mountain limestone both in abundance and exquisite lineaments. In some parts there are incalculable quantities of relics of fossil fishes, scales of fishes, and shells resembling mussels. The glory of these wonderful subterranean museums consists, however, in the infinite numbers and the inexpressible beauty of the impressions of fern-leaves, and of fragments of the stems--well known under the names of calamites, sigillaria, and lepidodendra--of the great plants which in the pre-Adamite times composed the woods and groves. In some of the mines--the Robin Hood, for instance, at Clifton, five miles from Manchester--the roof declares, in its flattened sculptures, the ancient existence hereabouts of a vast forest of these plants. At Dixonfold, close by, when the railway was in course of construction, there were found the lower portions of the fossilised trunks of half a dozen noble trees, one of the stone pillars eleven feet high, with a circumference at the base of over fifteen feet, and at the top, where the trunk was snapped when the tree was destroyed, of more than seven feet. These marvellous Dixonfold relics have been carefully preserved by roofing over, and are shown to any one passing that way who cares to inquire for them. Beneath the coal which lies in the plane of the roots, enclosed in nodules of clay, there are countless lepidostrobi, the fossilised fruits, it is supposed, of one or other of the coal-strata trees. Two miles beyond, at Halliwell, they occur in equal profusion; and here, too, unflattened trunks occur, by the miners aptly designated "fossil reeds." Leaves of palms are also met with. The locality which in wealth of this class of fossils excels all others in South Lancashire would appear to be Peel Delph. In it are found calamites varying from the thickness of a straw to a diameter of two or three feet, and as round as when swayed by the wind of untold ages ago. The markings upon the lepidodendra are as clear as the impress of an engraver's seal. In another part there is a stratum of some four feet in depth, consisting apparently of nothing besides the fossil fruits called trigonocarpa and the sandy material in which they are lodged. With these curious triangular nuts, no stems, or leaves, or plant-remains of any description have as yet been found associated. All that can be said of them is that they resemble the fruits of the many-sided Japanese tree called the salisburia. At Peel Delph again a stratum of argillaceous shale, five or six feet in thickness, contains innumerable impressions of the primeval ferns, the dark tint thrown forward most elegantly by the yellow of the surface upon which they repose. The neighbourhood of Bolton in general is rich in fossil ferns, though Ashton-under-Lyne claims perhaps an equal place, and in diversity of species is possibly superior. * * * * *