NOTES ON THE AUSTRALIAN TNIOPTERIDE®, 389 
RELATIONS. 
As the members of this family are classed mainly in accord- 
ance with their venation—the Nervatio Teniopteridis—it is on 
this factor that most stress must be laid in comparing them with 
recent ferns. Amongst these we may select immediately the 
genera Oleandra, Scolopendrium, and Marattia, Danea, Acros- 
tichum, Olfersia, Lomariopsis, Gymnogramma (javanica), Asple- 
nium (nidus), Vittaria, members of the recent Polypodia, 
Aspleniz, Aspideze, and Marattiacez. This will serve to prove 
the late Marquis de Saporta’s statement that the exact definition 
of the Teniopterids, properly so-called, constitutes one of the 
difficulties of Paleobotany.* Of the chief references given below, t 
the most important and recent is that by Mr. David White, who 
discusses very fully the evolution of Newropteris, Alethopteris, 
and Teniopteris, this last through Megalopteris of the Devonian, 
from what he terms the Megalopteris-stock. It would be impossible 
to do justice to this author’s views in any other words but his own ; 
and I venture to quote his concluding remarks: “ According to 
this hypothesis, we may suppose that the pinnate Tzeniopteridee, 
or a portion of that group (without prejudice of any important 
systematic distinction between the pinnate and simple forms) came 
from an early JMJegalopteris-stock, probably through the alethop- 
teroid forms. The earliest flora, so far as I know, in which any of 
these occur, that of the Middle Devonian at Saint Johns, New 
Brunswick, besides containing the /egalopteris Dawsont, has also 
representatives of Vewropteris, most of which are alethopteroid, 
and of Alethopteris, including the A grandis and A discrepens 
already referred to. It is not improbable that the three of these 
genera originated in a common stock ; and since the Megalopteris 
group offers a comprehensive type from which the Newropteris 
and Alethopteris, as well as the known MJegalopteris species, might 
well have descended, that name may conveniently be employed in 
the hypothesis to designate the type existing previous to the 
Middle Devonian, from which the neuropteroid, alethopteroid, and 
teeniopteroid, including in the Jatter some species of living Marat- 
tiaceous genera, descended.” In connection with JJegalopteris 
it may be mentioned that Solms Laubach considers that there are, 
in his opinion, no grounds for considering that these are anything 
but Ferns, in contradistinction to the views held by Saporta and 
Marion who considered them to be close to the Dolerophyllee, 
which are classed by Schimper as next to the Cordaitee. { 
* Saporta, Pal. Franc., Pl. Jurassiques, 1873, i, pp. 430-435 et. seq: 
} Seward, Foss. Pl. Wealden, 1894, i, pp. 122-125 
Solms-Laubach, Fossil Botany, Eng. ae 1891, p- 136. 
Schimper, in Zittel’s Traité de Paléontologie (French i ), pp. 128-1380. 
Feistmantel, Pal. Indica, Gondwana Flora, ii, 1880, pp. 9-14. 
White (D.), Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., 1893, iv, pp. 119-132. 
t Solms Laubach, Op. cit., p. 126. 
