228 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Kidston and Lang (Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, vol. li.) 

 described with ten most beautiful plates, largely of micro- 

 photographs of structure, exceptionally interesting petrified 

 remains of Rhynia from the Old Red Sandstone from 

 Aberdeenshire. These plants were represented in the Chert by 

 so large a number of excellently preserved remains that the 

 genus is now the most completely known of all Devonian plants. 

 The primitive nature of the genus will make it a great treasure 

 to systematists and others concerned with the phylogeny of 

 the lower plants. As described by Kidston and Lang, the 

 genus was entirely composed of branched cylindrical stems, 

 with neither roots nor leaves, the plant having grown in a 

 gregarious fashion with some aerial branches ; on the latter 

 were small lateral projections probably detachable for vegetative 

 propagation. The plant bore large cylindrical sporangia with 

 spores all of one kind. The affinities of such a plant are 

 naturally the subject of much speculation. The authors con- 

 cluded that it was more nearly allied to Dawson's Psilophyton 

 princeps than to any other fossil, and they indulged in attrac- 

 tive comparisons and grouping — without, however, even men- 

 tioning the existence of the only two really important and 

 recent memoirs dealing with Dawson's extremely unreliable 

 data. It is indeed inexcusable to deal with Psilophyton and 

 neither to mention David White's valuable memoir published 

 in 1905 nor that of Halle on the lower Devonian plants from 

 Norway published last year and drawn attention to in this 

 Journal. 



The Carboniferous was represented by a very important 

 work by Kidston and Jongmans, the text of their monograph 

 on the Calamites of Western Europe. The plates in this 

 classical memoir were published in 191 5 and in the present 

 text detailed descriptions of Calamites proper were given. 

 The authors considered the group from the external appear- 

 ance of impressions and stem-casts and so on, not dealing 

 with the petrified anatomy of internal parts. 



Kidston also contributed two memoirs on the British 

 Carboniferous : 



(a) " Fossil Plants from the Scottish Coal Measures " 

 (Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. vol. li. p. 709) described seven new 

 or interesting Carboniferous plants, of which five were new. 

 Each is recorded with a short, precise description and excel- 



