Fossil Floras of Gape Colony. 95 



the Vereeniging plant as regards the form, venation, and manner of 

 attachment of the leaves. As an example of a plant from a higher 

 geological horizon not unlike the African type, reference may be 

 made to Nosggerathia vogesiaca Bronn from the Eaibl Ehsetic beds, 

 but Bronn's plant has a broader axis, and the longer leaves are 

 disposed in two rows like the pinnae of a Cycadean frond.''' 



Plate XII., fig. 1 (XXIII.). 



The woody and fairly stout axis reaches a length of 34 cm., the 

 leaves appear to be arranged spirally, and in some of them the 

 attachment to the axis is clearly shown. The venation is faintly 

 indicated, but sufficiently obvious to show that the lamina is 

 traversed by numerous veins following a course approximately 

 parallel to the edges of the leaf. The leaf a, which is incomplete, 

 and may indeed represent half the original lamina, shows the gradual 

 tapering towards the base. Leaf b is still attached to the axis, and 

 illustrates the bilobed character, the wedge-shaped lamina being 

 divided by a deep median sinus into two halves, one of which has 

 become pressed down to a slightly lower level in the matrix of the 

 rock than the other. In the incomplete and lobed lamina of leaf c 

 the veins are fairly distinct. A portion of leaf d is seen in direct 

 continuity with the axis. The lamina of leaf e is almost perfect, and 

 shows the bilobed character very clearly. 



CORD AIT ALES. 



Genus NCEGGEEATHIOPSIS, Feistmantel. , 



Feistmantel's generic name instituted in 1879 i is another illustra- 

 tion of the influence of geographical distribution on nomenclature. 

 Had the leaves referred to this genus been found in European 

 Palaeozoic rocks there can be little doubt that they would have been 

 described under the name Cordaites. Professor Zeiller I has drawn 

 attention to slight differences as regards venation between the leaves 

 of the two genera, and in fragments of cuticle detached from a South 

 African specimen the disposition of the stomata appears to differ to 

 some extent from that in Cordaites. Kurtz § in a recent note has 

 incidentally referred to the more spreading arrangement of the veins 



* Bronn (oS), pi. vi. f Feistmantel (79), p. 23. 



+ Zeiller {'M>), p. 23. See also Feistmantel (90). g Kurtz (03), p. 2-5. 



