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This, therefore, would seem to shew the affinity of the sigillaria to the lepidodendron, and through it to the living lycopods, or club-mosses. Some few species of stigmarian roots had been discovered, and various specific names had been given to them before their actual nature was made out.
It is evident that the trees were overwhelmed by a shower of ashes from some neighbouring volcanic vent, as Pompeii was buried by matter ejected from Vesuvius. The trunks, several of them from three to five feet in circumference, remained with their Stigmarian roots spreading through the stratum below, which had served as a soil.
As there were 21 seams of coal in this intervening mass, the length of time comprised in the interval is not to be measured by the mere thickness of the sandstones and shales. This lower bed is an underclay seven feet thick, with stigmarian rootlets, and the small land-shells occurring in it are in all stages of growth.
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