09 



Ordinary Meeting, January 9tb, 1872. 



E. W. BixNNEY, RRS, F.G.S., President, in the Cliair. 



The PRESIDENT exhibited some specimens of a fossil 

 plant resembling the Psaronius Zeidleri found in the Upper 

 Foot Coal Seam, near Oldham. This species has been 

 described by Corda, in his Beitrage Zur Flora Der Vorvelt, 

 and figured in Plate XL., but has not hitherto, he believed, 

 been met with in the British coal fields. The Oldham 

 specimen appeared to him to be a petiole, of about one- 

 eighth of an inch in diameter, and is of a nearly circular 

 form in its transverse section, two-thirds of it consisting of a 

 zone of strong parenchymatous tissue and an internal axis 

 of vascular tissue arranged in four radiating arms of an 

 irregular oval form, resembling a St. Peter's cross. As he 

 could not connect the specimen with a stem of Psaronius, 

 he proposed to call it Stauropteris Oldhamia. 



In the above-named coal, as well as that of the Lower 

 Brooksbottom Seam, there is a great variety of beautiful 

 petioles which have not yet been described. Some of them 

 evidently belong to the genus Zygopteris, and may probably 

 be discovered in connection with their stems, but most of 

 them have been found detached and sometimes mistaken 

 for the rootlets of Stigmaria. From some specimens in his 

 cabinet he is led to believe that Cotta's Medullosa elegans 

 is merely the rachis of a fern or a plant allied to one. For 

 the best specimen of Stauropteris he is indebted to the 

 liberality of that intelligent collector of fossil plants, Mr, 

 James Whitaker, of Watersheddings, near Oldliam. 

 PROCEEDiNas— Lit. & Phil. Soc— Yol. XI.— No. 7.— Session 1871-2. 



