III. 
The Fruit-Spike of Calamites: 
A CHAPTER FROM THE HISTORY, OF FOSS 
BOTANY. 
OR many years there has been much doubt and uncertainty 
among paleobotanists as to whether or not the fossil spike 
now known as Calamostachys Binneyana, Schimp., is entitled to be 
recognised as the fruit of Calamites. It was so regarded by Carruthers 
(1) in 1867 and by Schimper (2) in 1869, and Binney (3), who 
described it in 1868 as the fruit of Calamodendvon commune, was 
practically of the same opinion, since the plant so named by him is 
one of the forms of Calamites. Williamson (4), on the other hand, 
has persistently maintained that its affinities are rather with the 
Lycopodiacez, and that the only spike entitled to rank as the fruit of 
Calamites is the one described by him in 1869, and more fully in 
1888, and which is very different in many respects from Calamostachys 
Binneyana. 
Recently the present writer has had an opportunity of studying 
a fine series of new preparations of the spike, belonging to Mr. W. 
Cash, of Halifax, and in a paper shortly to appear in the Pyvo- 
ceedings of the Yorkshire Geological and Polytechnic Society, he 
claims to have fully established the fact that it is the spike of some 
form of Calamites. ‘The time seems opportune, therefore, for a brief 
historical retrospect of the treatment accorded to Calamostachys 
Binneyana by those palzobotanists who have endeavoured to determine 
its affinities from a study of its structure. 
As described by Carruthers in 1867, Calamostachys Binneyana con- 
sists of an axis, around which are placed in close array a number of 
whorled appendages. These appendages are of two kinds, whorls of 
sterile bracts alternating regularly with whorls of stalked structures 
carrying sporangia containing spores. The latter have peltate heads, 
and closely resemble the sporangiophores of Eguisetum—so closely, 
indeed, that were the alternate whorls of sterile bracts suppressed or 
replaced by structures of the other type, the spike of Calamostachys 
Binneyana might well be taken for a spike of Equisetum. 
The specimens at the service of Carruthers appear to have been 
imperfect and not well preserved, as the minute anatomy of the spike 
