A modern plant fossil 
Epa M. Rounp 
(WITH ONE TEXT FIGURE) 
While collecting botanical materials in East Killingly, 
Connecticut, the writer came upon a so-called “cedar swamp” 
in which ferns like Woodwardia angustifolia Smith and Aspidium 
simulatum Davenp. grew, together with sphagnum and several 
species of liverwort. Woodsmen had visited the locality recently 
and cut the large hemlock trees, from the stumps of which 
broad shelf fungi belonging to the Polyporaceae had developed. 
One of these fungi had been removed from its host by a previous 
visitor and thrown upon a rock, over which flowed the waters 
of the peat bog. Examination of this water-soaked specimen 
showed it to be tough and pliable like India rubber, due perhaps 
to the resinous nature of the hemlock tree on which the fungus 
grew and the preservative qualities of the water from the peat 
bog. The specimen was in such good condition that the writer 
contemplated drying it for further study, when a cluster of the 
same fungi was found in situ upon a large hemlock stump, 
somewhat overgrown by small black birch trees. Examination 
of one of these specimens revealed not only the ordinary lines 
upon its surface but ‘also several very clear tracings of black 
birch leaves, the details of which were as exact as obtain on 
many rocks with fossil leaves impressed thereon (FIG. 1). 
In searching for an explanation of this phenomenon, it 
appeared that the black birch leaves had touched the surface 
of the shelf fungus when it was damp and growing rapidly, so 
that the leaves had been completely overgrown by the fungoid 
strands while still attached to the parent plant. Over the whole 
surface could be found examples of leaves in process of being ab- 
sorbed or incorporated into the fungus, parts of them being 
encrusted while other parts of the same leaves were free, dry 
and easily broken. Still other cases showed leaves scarcely 
touching the fungus but evidently somewhat invaded by its 
hyphae, as they were beginning to brown and seemed to be dying. 
Many ideas are advanced to account for the formation 
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