6 NOTICE OF A FOSSIL LYCOPODIACEOUS FRUIT. 
regular longitudinal ranges, which are disposed in a very elliptical 
helix, whose generating spire would be expressed by the fraction sy: 
an arrangement approaching that seen in several living Lycopodiacea.* 
The scales or bracts which form the spike are borne perpendicularly 
on the axis, and are even a little reflected; as they. have exactly the 
structure so well described by R. Brown in his Triplosporites, it is un- 
necessary for me to repeat it. As in his specimen, they take an erect 
direction towards their apex, and terminate at the surface of the fossil 
in a hexagonal disk, which should, as in Lepidostrobus, be prolonged 
into a foliaceous appendix, but this has been destroyed. 
On the narrow pedicels of these scales are inserted oblong sporangia, 
rounded at their extremities, as in Triplosporites ; those which occupy 
the summit and middle portion of the spike are filled with an innumer- 
able quantity of little spores, formed of three or sometimes of four 
spherical united cellules, which in some cases appear to separate into 
simple globular spores. 
On the lower portion of the spike we find sporangia similar in form 
and in their mode of attachment to the preceding, but which are ob- 
viously distinguished from them by the spores which they contain 
being simple, spherical, and of a considerable size, their diameter beiug 
ien or twelve times greater than that of the smaller spores. "They are 
very distinct to the naked eye, their diameter being three-tenths of a 
line, and enable one at once to detect the sporangia containing the 
microspores. 
These larger and perfectly spherical spores have a thick, smooth 
covering ; they generally contain scattered globular granules, the na- 
ture of which it is difficult to ascertain, but which seem to indicate an 
immature state ; some, filled with an opaque matter, appear more ad- 
vanced in their development. 
This spike thus presents, as in the Lycopodiaceous genera Selaginella 
and Jsoétes, sporangia of two kinds, the one towards the summit con- 
taining microspores,—that is to say, antheridia ; the others, placed 
towards the base of the spike, containing macrospores, or germinating 
spores. 
The form and mode of attachment of these sporangia, their large 
size, the great number of microspores they contain, the absence of any 
* I have represented this Egone of the leaves of Lycopodiacea in the 
‘Histoire des Végétaux Fossiles,’ ii. plate ii. 
CINEMA estis. c eamus cs tim cotone 
