Mr. Brown on an undescribed Fossil Fruit. 473 
Since the abstract of my paper was printed in the Proceedings of the So- 
ciety, the second volume of the Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great 
Britain has appeared, which contains an article entitled “Remarks on the 
Structure and Affinities of some Lepidostrodi.” The principal object of Dr. 
Hooker, the author of this valuable essay, is from a careful examination of a 
number of specimens, all more or less incomplete, or in various degrees of 
decomposition and consequent displacement or absolute abstraction of parts, to 
ascertain the complete structure or common type of the genus Lepidostrobus ; 
but the type so deduced is in every essential point manifestly exhibited, and 
in a much more satisfactory manner, by the single specimen of Triplosporite. 
This does not lessen the value of Dr. Hooker's discovery and investigation, 
but it gives rise to the question whether Triplosporite, which he has not 
at all referred to, and therefore probably considered as not belonging to 
Lepidostrobus, be really distinct from that genus ; and although there are still 
several points of difference remaining, namely, the form of the strobilus in 
Triplosporite, confirmed by a second specimen presently to be noticed, and 
in Lepidostrobus the more limited insertion of sporangium, and the very 
remarkable difference in the form of the unripe spores, hardly reconcilable 
with a similar origin to that described in Triplosporite, I am upon the 
whole inclined to reduce my fossil to Lepidostrobus until we are, from still 
more complete specimens of that genus, better able to judge of the value of 
these differences. The name Triplosporites however is already adopted, and a 
correct generic character given, in the second edition of Professor Unger's 
* Genera et Species Plantarum Fossilium, p. 270, published in 1850, who T 
the date of his preface in 1849 was not aware of Dr. Hooker's essay on sea 
dostrobus, the character of which he has adopted entirely from M. Brongniart’s 
account. Es : 
In October 1849 M. Brongniart showed me a fossil so closely resembling 
the Triplosporite, both in form and size, that at first sight 3 concluded 
it was the lower half of the same strobilus. On examination however 
it proved to be of somewhat greater diameter. It was nearly in the same 
mineral state, except that the crystallizations consequent on loss of yov 
were rather less numerous ; it differed also in the central part of the axis Doing 
still more complete; in the bracteæ being more distant and of a slightly 
392 
