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Lesquereux.] atta [April 4, 



On a Branch of Gordaites, bearing Fruit, By Leo Lesquereux. Piute 1. 

 (Read before the American PhilosopJiical Society, April ith, 1879.) 



In a former paper, Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. March, 1868, I have given an 

 account of the great work of Grand'Eury, especially considering his re- 

 searches on the Gordaites. 



Recent discoveries in the American Coal fields have afforded the means, 

 not only of judging the value and the importance of the facts considered by 

 the French author and of confirming his conclusions, but have also exposed 

 in a new light some peculiar characters of these remarkable plants. 



In considering the fruits of Gordaites (Cordaicarpus), p. 327, of the pa- 

 per, it is remarked on Antholites or flowers of Gordaites, that except small 

 nutlets, figured by Newberry, Dawson and Grand'Eury, and others, none 

 of the large fruits commonly found in the Coal Measures have been found 

 attached to stems or branches of Cordaites, nor indeed to any other kind of 

 coal plants. Nutlets of Antholites are not even as large as peas, while the 

 fruits of Cordaites, as Grand'Eury has figured them and as they are also 

 represented, PL LXXXIII of the U. S. Coal flora,* vary in diameter from 

 one to two and a half centimeters and therefore are, by their size, Without 

 correlation to those fixed upon branches of Antholites. Admitting as 

 proved that these large nuts are derived from Gordaites, the question has 

 been left, by Grand'Eury what it was before for all the phyto-paleontolo- 

 gists from the oldest, who like Sternberg have considered the matter 

 already, to those of our time. What is the relation of these fruits to the 

 plants, their position, the mode of attachment, on stems, on branches, iso- 

 lated and axillary, or in racemes, etc.? This question could be answered 

 only by the discovery of a distinctly characteristic fragment of a Gordaites 

 with the fructifications attached to it. It is to record that discovery, due 

 to the persevering researches of Mr. I. F. Mansfield, who has done so much 

 by systematic explorations in his coal bank of Cannelton, Pa., to promote 

 the interest of the American coal flora, that I write this short notice. 



The specimen bearing the vegetable remains is a piece of hard black 

 shale, so appropriately split in the plan of stratification that it exposes both 

 the upper face of the vegetable fragment and the counterpart. It repre- 

 sents a branch of Gordaites costatus (species figured U. S. Coal flora, PI. 

 LXXX, f. 1-3,), twelve centimeters long, bending down or like pending, 

 nearly fifteen millimeters broad, marked in its whole length by prominent, 

 kidney-shaped bolsters, support of pedicels or leaves, placed in spiral 

 order, in the three ranked arrangement, enlarged, inflated in the upper 

 part and abrubtly narrowed into a tlexuous linear, lanceolate, long base. 

 The nut or fruit is oval, three centimeters long from the point of attach 

 ment to the obtuse top, twenty-three millimeters broad, including its in- 

 flated border (three millimeters), broadly obtuse and entire; at the top, 

 rounded and narrowed at the base to a point of attachment or very short 



* Published by the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, 1879. 



