CORDAITEAE. 1 21 



shows a radial structure. I have had the opportunity of seeing sections of 

 the best-preserved specimens in the Jermyn Street Museum and from 

 Thiselton Dyer, but I do not venture to express any opinion respecting 

 their place in the system ; the truth is that I entertain some doubts as to 

 the vegetable nature of these remains. The fossils which J. M. Clarke 1 has 

 recently described from the Devonian formation of N. America under the 

 names Sporangites Huronensis, Daws., and S. (Protosalvinia) bilobata, 

 Daws., appear to be similar objects. In the latter form several of the small 

 bodies just described lie in a sac-like common envelope. 



Hitherto we have considered only those flowers and seeds of Cordaiteae 

 and any other gymnospermous forms, in which the structure can be made 

 out with certainty in the petrified remains. But it has more than once 

 been remarked that the same and similar remains are often found in the 

 Coal-measures in the form of impressions, and that these have long been 

 described in the literature under a great variety of names. We must then 

 return to these forms in concluding the present chapter, and we may mention 

 first a number of cases in which inflorescences have been found still attached 

 to the branches of Cordaitae which bore them ; their diversity of appear- 

 ance supplies further ground for the view which has been already expressed, 

 that the group was composed of a great variety of species,, and that we can 

 at present only form a conjecture or general idea of the differences which 

 were developed in it, but are very far from having any real knowledge of 

 them. A number of figures of these forms will be found in Grand' Eury 2 . 

 Slender branchlets are attached laterally to portions of leafy branches, and 

 bear in the axils of short scale-leaves clusters either of naked ovules or of 

 small evidently male buds enclosed in scales. In one of the specimens 

 figured 3 the two kinds of lateral shoots stand side by side, which would 

 show that this species of Cordaiteae was monoecious, provided there has 

 been no reconstruction ; but on this point I am left still in doubt. It seems 

 a remarkable fact that all these specimens show the flowering branches in 

 definite relation to the leaves, but at the same time so much raised above 

 and out of their axils, that we may doubt whether they ought to be called 

 axillary shoots. That there were differences as regards the position of the 

 inflorescence in different forms is shown by one figure 4 , in which the male 

 buds are not disposed in clusters on lateral branches, but occupy the sum- 

 mits of elongated branchlets which are placed in a tuft on the end of the 

 shoot. That there were differences also in the foliation of the flowering 

 branches is seen directly by comparing the impressions of which we are 

 speaking with Renault's section-preparations, in which we found that the 

 flowers, few in number, were actually immersed among strongly developed 



1 Clarke (1). 2 Grand' Eury (1), t. 21, f . 8 ; t. 25, ff. i, 3. 3 Grand' Eury (1), t. 25, f. 3. 



Grand' Eury (1), t. 21, f. 5. 



