34 PBNHALLOW AND DAWSON 



bodies has beeu preseived, aud so far as I am aware, the interior structures have perished. 

 I have elsewhere noticed the microscopic appearance of these bodies, both in the Corwen 

 specimens and those from Cape Bon Ami/ 



Of the other plants found with Nematophytou, there are none that can with any cer- 

 tainty be connected with it. In the following notes. Prof. Penhallow has described some 

 other stems or branches showing structure, but these were probably specifically or gener- 

 ically distinct. Psilophytou, its most common associate, was a low-growing plant, with 

 cord-like rhizomata and an entirely different structure, having an axis of scalariform 

 vessels with cellular bark. The same remark applies to Arthrostigma. The fucoids 

 known as Spirophi/ton -were low-growing plants, of- delicate, perishable texture. In the 

 Gi-aspé sandstones and at Bordeaux quarry there are flattened, coaly, branching bodies, 

 which may possibly have belonged to Nematophyton, and if I were disposed to conjecture 

 as to possible foliage, I would refer to the long linear leaves without apparent nerves, 

 which I have named Cordaites angvstifolia, and which seem to have been attached in a 

 spiral manner to slender stems or branches. No actual evidence, however, of the struc- 

 tures of Nematophyton in connection with these leaves has been observed. 



Another singular associate of Nematophyton would seem to indicate that it was a 

 resinous plaut. In the sandstones of Graspé basin there occur laminae of a resinous sub- 

 stance resembling amber, associated with Carbouaceoixs films, and with fragments of 

 Nematophyton. Specimens collected by the officers of the Gleological Survey have been 

 analyzed by Dr. Sterry Hunt,^ and are regarded by him as a fossil resin, and the manner 

 in which it occirrs in thin sheets, and these attached to plates of coaly matter, indicates 

 that it has been a secretion in the bark of some tree. The same material occiirs in the 

 same manner in the Bordeaux quarry in the flaggy sandstones holding Nematophyton. 

 In these sandstones, the resinous matter is in thin shining structureless flakes, often attached 

 to flakes of coaly matter, and evidently represents exudations of resin in or over vegetable 

 surfaces. Now, as no other arboreal ijlant than Nematophyton is known in these beds, 

 and as fragments of its structure are associated with the resin, the inference would be 

 that the resinous matter was produced by it. If it was a resinous plant, this would also 

 serve to account for the remarkable preservation of the fibrous structure of the mass of the 

 stem, otherwise so inexplicable in a plant apparently of so lax structure. It is true that 

 the resinous matter has not yet been actually found in connection with stems of Nemat- 

 ophyton, unless it is represented by a slight varuish of asphaltic matter, sometimes seen 

 in what seem to be fissures of the stem, or by certain yellow microscopic bodies which 

 appear in some slices of the roots, so that this reference must be for the present con- 

 jectural. 



It maybe said that resinous Coniferous trees, as yet unknown, may have existed ; but 

 the genus Dadoxylon, the earliest of these trees, is not known to occur till the Middle 

 Devonian,' though found at that, horizon, in various parts of America and of Europe, aud 

 there is no evidence that trees of this genus produced resinous matter, though in the vast 

 number of trunks occurring in the Devonian aud Carboniferous, some indication of this 

 might have been expected, had it been p)resent. On the other hand, in some of the beds 



1 Fossil Plants of Brian. Geol- Survey, Canada, 1882. 



'' Logan's Geology of Canada, p. 791. ^ Geology of Canada, I. c. 



