The distance between the first and the last was more than 100 feet, and
the roots of all were imbedded in a soft argillaceous shale. In the same plane
with the roots is a bed of coal, eight or ten inches thick, which has been found
to extend across the railway, or to the distance of at least ten yards. Just
above the covering of the roots, yet beneath the coal-seam, so large a quantity
of the Lepidostrobus variabilis was discovered inclosed in nodules of hard clay,
that more than a bushel was collected from the small openings around the base of
some of the trees (see Figure 457 of this genus). The exterior trunk of each was
marked by a coating of friable coal, varying from one-quarter to three-quarters
of an inch in thickness; but it crumbled away on removing the matrix. The
dimensions of one of the trees is 15 1/2 feet in circumference at the base, 7
1/2 feet at the top, its height being eleven feet. All the trees have large
spreading roots, solid and strong, sometimes branching, and traced to a distance
of several feet, and presumed to extend much farther.
In a colliery near Newcastle a great number of Sigillariae occur in the rock as
if they had retained the position in which they grew.
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