Two coal seams which are believed to correspond with the Harutori coal bearing formation in the Miocene, are respetively situated at the Harutori mine, Kushiro city, Hokkairio and the Hifashikuchiro mine about 9km. north of the former.
Samples were taken at 20cm. interval. The separation of the pollens from these coal somples were made by mixing a small quant ?? ty of them crushed to-pass a 30-mesh sieve, with an equal amount of KCIO
3, and then adding about 10 times the bulk of pure HNO
3 to this mixture. Then after one or two days, these browned samples were washed in water and finally treated with 10 ?? 150% KOH.
For the analyses more than 220 grains of tree pollen are counted and the percentages of respectve-tree registered at each eve1.
The observed pollens are Sequoia or Metascquoia, Taxodium, Glyptostrobus, Pinus, Picea or Keteleeria, Larix, Mysas Carva, Alnus, Corylus, Carpinus, Betula, Tilia, Jugiaris. Quercus, Salix, Ericacea, Gramineous etc. These results (Table 1 and Fig. 1 and 2) show that Sequoia (including Metasequoia, Taxodivm and Glyptostrobus, for it is difficult to distingush their genus) is exceedingly aboundant throughout, and Pinus, Alnus, Ericacea, Carpinus etc are also relatively aboundant, indicating these percentages are constant. The results show also that though few differences of the percentage are seen between the coals of the mines, and so to Sequoia pollen that of the Higashikushiro mine is average 6.7% as much as that of the Harutori mine, Pinus complements this, and those of the coal seam in the two mines are respectively similar. Thus it is considered that conifers such as Sequoia or Metasequoir, Taxodium, Glyptostrobus, Pinus etc depeloped throughnout at that time, and that pollenanalytical results are geologically correlated as a same horizon.
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