1 66 THE SCOTTISH BOTANICAL REVIEW 



aquatic, however, others are widely terrestrial, e.g., grasses, sedges, 

 etc., and others are Geophytes, Liliacese, etc., and some are climbing 

 plants. The majority are fond of a moist climate. Most groups 

 are shrub-like. A few Palms, Pandamis, etc., are arboreal. 



3. Range in Time of Monocotyledons. 



Many problematical fossil organisms have been assigned to this 

 group of which the preservation is so imperfect, or the geological 

 age too remote, to merit serious consideration in this connection. 

 A few instances of noted errors of the kind may, however, be referred 

 to at this point 



The Carboniferous fossil Fothocites, considered to be an Angiosperm, 

 is the fructification of a Calamite, as shown by Kidston.^ 



The fossils named Spirangium, found in Carboniferous and later 

 rocks, are the egg-cases of a fossil shark. They have been assigned 

 to a variety of different groups of plants, e.g., BromeliaccEe, Cyperaces, 

 Equisetacete. 



Aethophyllum compared with Typhaces is found in the same beds 

 as Schizoneura, a genus of the Equisetales, and may be part of a 

 plant of that group. 



Echinostachys has also been referred to Typha, but on no better 

 grounds, and may be nothing more than some form of coniferous 

 cone such as Voltzia. 



Starkie Gardner- figures fragments of the stem of a supposed 

 monocotyledon from the Yorkshire Oolite, but they are only portions 

 of Equisetites bea/iii (Bunb.) as pointed out by Professor Williamson. 

 The fragments termed Efidogetiites and supposed to be monocoty- 

 ledonous by Lindley and Hutton the authors of the " Fossil Flora," ^ 

 are only portions of cycads in the case of the Wealden specimen, 

 whilst the Carboniferous Endogeniies striata may be Lyginodefidron. 



A number of so-called monocotyledons were figured and described 

 by Buckman from the Lias, but these have all been found to be 

 either fragments of gymnospermous leaves or cryptogams. 



The specimens he describes are referred to Liliiflorae, Naiadaceae 

 and other groups. Our earliest palaeobotanists, Sternberg, Schlotheim, 

 and others, even down to Lindley and Mutton's time (i 831-183 7, 

 '• Fossil Flora ") regarded the Paleozoic plants Calamttes, Afmuiaria, 

 Calamocladus {Asterophyllites), Stigmaria, etc., as Angiosperms. 

 And Calamttes was for long regarded as a fossil reed, and Nceg- 

 gerathia, and the triquetrous seeds known as Trigonocarpus were 

 referred to the palms. 



Lindley and Hutton also conclude that Cactaceae, Euphorbiace», 

 etc., existed in the Coal-measures. 



^ "Annals and Mag. Nat. Hibt.,'' 5th ser., vol. x. p. 404, 1882; ibid., 1883, 



p. 305- 



- " Geol. Mag," pi. ix. fig. 3, 1886, pp. 201-2. 

 ^ Vol. iii., pi. 227 A, p. 193. 



