382 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. viH. 



states that Mr. Carruthers informs him that he regards Psilo- 

 phyton as founded on the axes of Lepidodendra and on the 

 fruit of ferns of the genus Rhodea of Stur. For this statement 

 I have no published authority on the part of the English botanist, 

 and it is certainly quite destitute of foundation in nature. My 

 original specimens of Psilophyton are low plants with slender 

 stems growing from rhizomata, and their leaves and fruits are 

 attached to them, while Rhodea is merely a provisional genus 

 formed to include certain ferns of the Hymonophyllid group, but 

 otherwise of uncertain affinities. In the same note M. Crepin 

 intimates that Mr. Carruthers has abandoned his Psilophyton 

 Dechenianum, published in the Journal of Botany for 1843, and 

 in which he had included Salter's Lepidodendron nothum and 

 Lycopodites Millerl and " rootlets," as well as Goeppert's Hali- 

 serites Dechenlanus and a peculiar plant given to him by Sir P. 

 Egerton ! * Such a change of opinion I must admit to be judi- 

 cious. The fact that these plants could, even conjecturally, be 

 identified by a skilful botanist, shows however how imperfectly 

 they are known, and warrants some investigation of the causes 

 of this obscurity, and of the true nature of the plants. 



The characters given by Mr. Carruthers in his paper of 1873 

 for the species P. Dechenianum, are very few and general : — 

 " Lower branches short and frequently branching, giving the 

 plant an oblong circumscription." Yet even these characters do 

 not apply, so far as known, to Miller's fucoids or Salter's rootlets 

 or Goeppert's Haliserites. They merely express the peculiar 

 mode of branching already referred to in Salter's Lepidodendron 

 nothum. The identification of the former plants with the Lepi- 

 dodendron and Lycopodites indeed rests only on mere juxtapo- 

 sition of fragments, and on the slight resemblance of the decorti- 

 cated ends of the branches of the latter plants to Psilophyton. 

 It is contradicted by the obtuse ends of the branches of the 



* Mr. Carruthers has elsewhere identified Lepidodendron nothum and 

 L. Gaspianum with Leptophleum rhombicum, and this with an Austral- 

 ian species collected by Mr. Daintree in Queensland, hut which I 

 subsequently found to be a speeies allied to the well known Lepido- 

 dendron tetragonum ol the Lower Carboniferous, and which had been 

 previously discovered by Mr. Sclwyn in the Carboniferous of Victoria. 

 See Carruthers 1 paper in the Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 

 28, and rny criticism in vol. 29, whieh last was however only printed 

 in abstract, and with some comments under the head of" Discussion,'' 

 to which if present I could have very easily replied. 



