BY THE REV. J. E. TENISON-WOODS, F.G.S., F.L.S. 133 



This species was dedicated to Mr. P. F. Adams, Surveyor- 

 General of N. S. Wales. The specimens were imperfect, and on 

 the whole the peculiarities of the species were such that Dr. 

 Feistmantel was far from satisfied that it should be referred to the 

 genus Caulopteris, yet as the details were too indistinct and scanty 

 for the erection of any new genus, he knew no existing form with 

 which it could be classed, except the one to which he referred it. 

 It was found in Newcastle, but there are no particulars as to the 

 mine or the horizon. 



Order. Lycopodiace^e. 



Stem or rhizome bearing true leaves, either linear, or small and 

 one-nerved, or reduced to minute scales. Spore-cases solitary or few 

 together, sessile in the axils of the leaves or of the bracts of a ter- 

 minal spike, either all similar or of two kinds, larger ones macro, 

 sporangia, containing a few larger spores or macrospores, and smaller 

 micro-sporangia, containing numerous smaller, often miscroscopic 

 microspores, the differences now generally admitted to be sexual. 



The order, as far as existing species are concerned, is spread over 

 nearly the whole globe, and three of the Australian genera have 

 nearly as wide a range ; two others are both in the New and the 

 Old World, chiefly tropical or southern ; the remaining two extend 

 to N. Zealand, one of them also being in the Pacific Islands. I 

 need not refer to the wonderfully important part taken by this 

 order in former periods of the earth's history, especially in the 

 earliest Carboniferous flora. Not only did this Order predominate 

 but also its members assumed the proportions of large trees and 

 formed immense forests, which are now entombed, and preserved 

 for man in the form of coal. Australia has been no exception to 

 this, though the fossil species that we have are found more in 

 connection with the Devonian rocks than with coal. 



Lepidodendrox. Sternberg. 

 Large trees with dichotomous branches, surface closely covered 

 with alternately arranged, rhombic scars, having a vascular 

 cicatrix near the middle or upper angle. Leaves linear or peltate, 

 fruit a strobilus or cone at the extremity of certain branches. 



