ribe it as differing very
considerably in structure from any of the coniferae of the Coal Measures.
"Its medullary rays," says Messrs. Lindley and Hutton, "appear to be
more numerous, and frequently are not continued through one zone of wood
to another, but more generally terminate at the concentric circles. It
abounds also in turpentine vessels, or lacunae, of various sizes, the
sides of which are distinctly defined." Viewed through the microscope,
in transparent slips, longitudinal and transverse, it presents, within
the space of a few lines, objects fitted to fill the mind with wonder.
We find the minutest cells, glands, fibres, of the original wood
preserved uninjured. _There_ still are those medullary rays entire that
communicated between the pith and the outside,--_there_ still the ring
of thickened cells that indicated the yearly check which the growth
received when winter came on,--_there_ the polygonal reticulations of
the cross section, without a single broken mesh,--_there_, too, the
elongated cells in the longitudinal one, each filled with minute glands
that take the form of double circles,--_there_ also, of larger size and
less regular form, the lacunae in which the turpentine lay: every nicely
organized speck, invisible to the naked eye, we find in as perfect a
state of keeping in the incalculably ancient pile-work on which the
gigantic Scuir is founded, as in the living pines that flourish green on
our hill-sides. A net-work, compared with which that of the finest lace
ever worn by the fair reader would seem a net-work of cable, has
preserved entire, for untold ages, the most delicate peculiarities of
its pattern. There is not a mesh broken, nor a circular dot away!

The experiments of Mr. Witham on the Eigg fossil, furnish an
interesting example of the light which a single, apparently simple,
discovery may throw on whole departments of fact. He sliced his specimen
longitudinally and across, fastened the slices on glass, ground them
down till they became semi-transparent, and then, examining them under
reflected light by the microscope, marked and recorded the specific
peculiarities of their structure. And we now know, in consequence, that
the ancient Eigg pine, to which the detached fragment picked up at the
base of the Scuir belonged,--a pine alike different from those of the
earlier carboniferous period and those which exist contemporary with
ourselves,--was, some _three creations_ ago, an exceedingly c