1879.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 165 



Williamstown, Pa. The specimen is a mass of coal shale, with 

 foot prints, and was discovered by the donor at the Ellangowan 

 Colliery, in strata between the Primrose and Mammoth veins, in 

 the Mahanoy coal field. Mr. Lorenz remarks that it is of especial 

 interest, as the first specimen of the kind found in the Anthracite 

 coal field. The Sauj-opus jyrimeevus of Lea, of which the original 

 specimen is preserved in our museum, was discovered in the um- 

 bral red shale, near Pottsville, belonging to the subcarboniferous 

 series. 



The specimen before us is an irregular slab, upwards of a foot 

 long and less than half the breadth. The upper surface is obscurely 

 ripple marked longitudinally, and is crossed in a slant by seven 

 tracks, which are in pairs, except one in advance on the right. Three 

 only are complete, the others being imperfect. The four tracks on 

 the right occupy a line of six inches, and are about an inch and a 

 half apart from those on the left. The tracks appear to be single, that 

 is to say, not produced by fore and hind feet together,and no distinc- 

 tion can be detected between impressions of these. The more per- 

 fect impressions exhibit four widely divergent 

 toes, successively increasing in length from 

 within outwardlj 7 , excepting that the fourth 

 toe is slightly shorter than the third. A feeble 

 rounded impression of a sole is visible behind 

 the toes. The expanse of the tracks is about 

 an inch. The accompanying outline will give 

 an idea of their form, though the sole compara- 

 tively with the toes is not so distinctlj r defined. The intervals of 

 the toes appear not to be webbed, or at most are only feebly so. 



The impressions are probably those of an amphibian, and per- 

 haps pertained to some salamandroid animal. 



As it is customary to refer to fossil foot tracks, as representing 

 the animals by which they were made, under distinct names, it 

 would be proper to designate the present specimen in the same 

 way. In accordance with its discovery in the Anthracite coal 

 field, and from the colliery in which the specimen was found, Mr. 

 Lorenz suggests that it should be called the Anthracopus ellan- 



G0WENSIS. 



On Sex in Castanea Americana. Mr. Thomas Meehan referred 

 to the flowers of the common chestnut, Castanea Americana, and 

 pointed out that the flowers were the products of axillary buds, 

 which, in young trees, would have borne branches. These spikes 

 of male flowers fell off by an articulation in the axils of the leaves 

 soon after the flowers were mature, and it was remarkable that in 

 young trees that had not arrived at bearing condition, the buds 

 also fell by an articulation before developing the axillary branch- 

 let. Sometimes the leaves would be considerably advanced before 



