These fossils are not in a state of petrifaction, but generally consist in the form of an easily-separated film of carbonaceous matter, or more frequently as a simple coaly marking. Sometimes, but very rarely, the plant is found betwixt the slaty layers, as it were in a dried state, and still perfectly flexible; and the impressions not unfrequently resemble the narrow striated leaves of the alopecurus geniculatus, the floating foxtail-grass, with its knotted culms. There are other specimens, that look like the bark of trees, or the branches of the gnarled oak, ribbed and jointed crosswise. The round dotted patches, varying from the size of a garden pea to an inch in diameter, not unlike, in shape and appearance, the form of a compressed strawberry, are very plentiful. Dr. Fleming, in Cheek’s “Edinburgh Journal” for February, 1831, has figured this organism in connection with the stem, which thereby forms a graceful and well-defined flowering plant, while Sir Charles Lyell considers these berry-shaped forms to be the relics of the ova of some gasteropoda of the period. But at Wormit and Parkhill they are so uniformly, and in such numbers, associated with the culmiferous and leaf impressions, as most strongly to vindicate their claim to a vegetable origin. We have in our collection several specimens, with this organism separated certainly from the culm, but still in such closeness and proportionate size, as, with little aid from the imagination, to infer their former connection, and assign to them a place among the phanerogamous and seed-yielding plants. If so, we cannot too highly prize these relics, regarding them, as they undoubtedly are, among the oldest of organic substances—the first of the green herbs that sprung from the earth—the fragile flower, that withers often in a day, there to attest the mandate of primeval creation. How many seasons have returned; how many seed-times and harvests have covered the fields; what revolutions and changes over all these hills and plains, since that flinty rock formed the soil, and these vegetables sprung from its fertility! They are not admitted among the economic order of the gramineæ; nor whether of marine, semi-marine, or lacustrine origin, have geologists been able to determine.