NOTICE OF A FOSSIL LYCOPODIACEOUS FRUIT. b 
The numerous MISES of fructification—many of them, however, 
very imperfectly preserved— examined by this excellent observer are 
ed very small portions of the cones; some of them, however, seem 
to have been preserved in full, and there is no indication of difference 
of structure between the base and summit. All the scales bear spo- 
rangia of the same form, which appear to enclose bodies of the same 
nature; this is, at least, what the figures and descriptions published by 
the learned English botanist indicate. 
hese characters seem, then, to place Lepidostrobus among true 
Lycopodia, the sporangia of which are all alike, and enclose similar 
spores. 
The family of Lycopodiacee contains two other genera very different 
in this respect, Selaginella and Isoëtes, which, on the same stem or in 
the same spike, —that is to say, on the same axis,—have two kinds of 
sporangia, the one containing very small spores destined to produce 
antherozoids, and to become fecundating organs ; the other much 
larger spores, which germinate after being fecundated. These two 
organs have been designated by the names of microspores and macro- 
spores. 
There is T in the specimens described by R. Brown, or by Dr. 
J. Hooker, which indicates this double nature of the sporangia and 
spores; but a very perfect and on the whole well-preserved specimen 
of a spike, identical in its upper part with the 7»iplosporites of R. 
Brown, throws a new light on this subject, and shows a modification 
in these points analogous to what we observe in living Lycopodiacea. 
This remarkable specimen was found in the drift at the entrance 
of the valley of Volpe, in Haute-Garonne, by M. Dabadie, apothe- 
cary; it was given to me by M. Lartet, to whom M. Dabadie had en- 
trusted it, and the discoverer of this interesting specimen has been 
good enough to allow me to make a longitudinal section of it, and to 
keep the half of it for the Museum. 
This specimen, of which a cast was carefully taken before being cut, 
is completely silicified ; the organization of the different parts is well 
preserved in many points; but the anfractuosities and the crystallized 
parts do not allow an equally complete examination throughout. 
It is a cone or cylindrical strobilus, 4 inches 8j lines long, and © 
2 inches 13 lines broad, showing on the exterior the summits of the 
scales of which it is composed; these form twenty-seven perfectly 
