206 REMINISCENCES OF 



of my views was made somewhere about 1883 ? their 

 first acceptance in France was by M. Zeiller of the 

 Paris School of Mines. He had fortunately obtained 

 a fructification of a true Sigillaria which was un- 

 questionably cryptogamic in every feature, hence he 

 announced his recognition of my views. Still later 

 I received a letter from M. Grand' Eury expressing 

 his new conviction that I was right in placing my 

 Calamites amongst the Cryptogams, and in May 27, 

 1889, he sent to the Institute a brief notice to that 

 effect, which was published in the Comptes Rendus 

 des Sciences. One result of M. Zeiller's memoir 

 was that in 1885 M. Renault, the most determined 

 of my opponents, and most devoted supporter of the 

 Brongniartian school, felt compelled to make the fol- 

 lowing admission : " Les Sigillaires groupe de plantes, 

 " essentiellement de transition, se diviseraient alors 

 " en Leiodermariees on Sigillaires phane'rogames a 

 4f ecorce lisse, voisines des Cycadees, et Rhytidolepces 

 "ou Sigillaires cryptogames, a ecorce cannelee, voisines 

 " des Isoetes," December 7, 1885, Comptes Rendus des 

 Seances de VAcademie des Sciences. 



This was a large admission in favour of the views 

 for which I had then been contending for fifteen or 

 sixteen years ; the more so because even then 

 the Leiodermariae constituted but an unimportant 

 division of the Sigillariae, and did not include those 

 forms upon which Brongniart had based his views. 

 At a later period this division was practically thrown 

 overboard, because examples of stems were found 



