Manchester Memoirs, Vol. I. (1906), No. 10. 



X. A New Fern from the Coal Measures : 



Tjibicaulis Sutclijfii spec. nov. 



By Marie C. Stopes, D.Sc, Ph.D., 



Assistant Lecturer and Demonstrator of Botany in tlie 

 University of Manchester. 



Received and read May Stii, igo6. 



I. Introductory. 



The " Age of Ferns " is the misleading name which 

 has been sometimes apph'ed to the period during which 

 the Coal Measures were deposited. This name, which no 

 longer represents the facts known to us, is now threatened 

 with the fate of most of man's surmises, and the " Age of 

 Pteridosperms " seems to be replacing it. Since the pub- 

 lication of the paper by Oliver and Scott (104) on Lageno- 

 stoma, the seed of Lyginodendron , recent work on similar 

 lines has rapidly accumulated numbers of important facts, 

 and, as Scott (:05) demonstrated in the Wilde Lecture, 

 we must conclude that many of the paleozoic " ferns " 

 were not true pteridophytes. The great phylogenetic 

 importance of these discoveries has led to an acces- 

 sion of interest in the plants of this period, which 

 are of such assistance to botanists in filling the gaps 

 in their knov/ledge of the " Natural System " aimed at 

 since the time of Linnaeus. The discovery of seeds on 

 fern-like plants has also increased our curiosity regarding 

 the actual ferns of the same period ; but strange to say, 

 in this ' Age of Ferns ' the number of such plants with 

 their structure preserved so that anatomical study is 

 possible, is exceedingly limited. Though scattered frag- 

 ments are of frequent occurrence, ferns are all too rare 



June 2gth, igo6. 



