66t EOCENE FEENS FROM IRELAND AND SCOTLAND. 



a fern requiring a relatively moderate temperature in our Eocene 

 period ; and I think temperature must have excluded it from 

 Bournemouth, where otherwise every variety of condition favour- 

 able to fern-growth seems to have existed. Bovey was evidently a 

 much higher station and far from the sea. This species is found iu 

 many of the relatively temperate Middle and Upper Eocene floras 

 of Europe, and, as before remarked, possibly extended to circum- 

 polar regions, just as Aspidium Lonchitis extends from Naples and 

 Greece to Disco, the subtropical Trichomanes radicans to Ireland, 

 and Hymenophyllum to Norway ; it is also met with in the 

 American Tertiaries. It must haye been a robust fern and of 

 somewhat coriaceous texture, the pinnules being with difficulty 

 detached from the rhachis, and, judging from its presence in the 

 Bovey beds, addicted to marshy stations. 



Attention had already been called to this specimen by Mr. 

 W. H. Baily. in the ' .Reports of the British Association ' for 1883. 

 The stone is in the possession of the Eev. Canon Grainger, P.G.S., 

 of Broughshane, and is quite full of fragments of pinnae. 



It was originally described as Polypodites stiriacus by Unger, 

 and the generic name was altered successively to Lastrcea, Heer, 

 Goniopteris, A. Braun, and Phegopteris, Ettingsh. 



DESCRIPTION OP PLATE XXVI. 

 Figs. 1-4. Onoclea hebridica, J. S. Gardn., Ardtun Head, Isle of Mull. 



1. Portions of pinnse from a large frond, Bhowing copiously 



anastomosing venation. 



2. Upper part of a frond with less anastomosing venation, and 



denticulate to entire margins. 



3. Fragment from a fertile frond with sori. 



4. Similar fragment from lining 0. sensibilis. 



5-7. Gleichenia hibernica, J. S. Gardn., Glenarm. Antrim. 



5. Parts of a pair of probably basal pinnse. 

 P>. Parts of a pair of probably apical pinnae. 

 7. Veinlets magnified, with scar of sorus. 



8. Goniopteris stiriaca, Unger, Lough Neagh. 



9. Goniopteris Bunbiirii, Heer, Lough Neagh. 

 10 & 11. Gleichenia, sp., Ballypalady, Antrim. 



Figs. 1-7. Collected by the author, and deposited in the British Museum by 

 direction of he Royal Society. Fig. 8. In the cabinet of the 

 Rev. Canon Grainger, Broughshane. Fig. 9. In the collection of 

 the Geological Survey, Dublin. 



