Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/376

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Pl. 57, Fig. 3, exhibits similar stumps of trees rooted in their native mould, in the Cliff immediately east of Lulworth Cove. Here the strata have been elevated nearly to an angle of 45°, and the stumps still retain the unnatural inclination into which they have been thrown by this elevation.

The facts represented in these last three figures are fully described and explained in the paper above referred to; they prove that plants belonging to a family that is now confined to the warmer regions of the earth, were at a former period, natives of the southern coast of England.

As no leaves have yet been found with the fossil Cycadeæ under consideration, we are limited to the structure of their

dulations, marked in the stone, which surrounds a single stump, rooted in the dirt-bed in the Isle of Portland. This very curious disposition has apparently resulted from undulations, produced by winds, blowing at different times in different directions on the surface of the shallow fresh water, from the sediments of which the matter of this stratum was supplied, while the top of this stem stood above the surface of the water. See Geol. Trans. Lond. N. S. vol. iv. p. 17.