150 F1LICES. 



well to notice the small group of Botryopterideae, with which Renault's 1 

 excellent investigations have made us tolerably well acquainted. Collections 

 of fragments of fruiting leaves of these plants are occasionally found in the 

 pebbles of Grand' Croix and Autun. from thin sections of which we learn 

 that the leaf had no normal lamina, but that crowded and irregularly 

 branched bunches of stalked sporangia formed the final terminations of 

 a branched and regularly pinnated leaf. The sporangia themselves are 

 ovoid (Botryopteris), or elongate-ovoid and slightly curved (Zygopteris), 

 and had stout walls, but the mode of dehiscence is not stated. The wall is 

 formed of one layer of cells according to Renault, but Grand' Eury 2 , who 

 has also figured this or a similar form, depicts several cell-layers. It may 

 be conjectured that the inner layers were destroyed in Renault's specimens, 

 and his figures show a sac-like envelope inclosing the spores, which I can 

 only suppose to be a crushed cell-layer. Both genera show an annulus, 

 which if not sharply defined is still evident. In Zygopteris the annulus 

 forms two longitudinal bands running from top to bottom, which unite 

 perhaps above the apex, and which can be distinctly perceived to the right 

 and left on the transverse section as large-celled parietal tissue. Its shape 

 reminds us to some extent of Grand' Eurya, Zeill. (not Stur), which was 

 described above. In Botryopteris the annulus is on one side and less dis- 

 tinct, and is more like that of Renaultia, Stur, except that it does not extend 

 to the apex of the sporangium. Renault 3 thinks it is ' rather a disk ana- 

 logous to that of Todca or Osmunda, only more developed and differently 

 disposed.' 



It was stated above that Grand' Eury 4 had already compared these 

 bunches of sporangia known to him from Autun with certain impres- 

 sions from St. Etienne which he names Androstachys, but which had been 

 previously found near Wettin and described by Germar 5 as Araucarites 

 spiciformis, and indeed had explained them both as male organs of plants 

 resembling Noggerathia. We do in fact find in this Androstachys of 

 Grand' Eury the same little clusters of organs as those just described, and 

 they are ranged on both sides of the thick rib-like bladeless primary rays 

 of a regularly pinnated leaf. It can scarcely be doubted therefore that 

 they belong to one another. And lastly, Grand' Eury succeeded in finding 

 sterile leaves also with the same habit, in which the bunches of sporangia are 

 simply replaced by delicate and apparently irregularly divided portions of 

 the lamina, in which the nervation could not be determined, though it was 

 supposed to be that of Caenopteris. These sterile leaves, to which Grand' 

 Eury gave the name Schizopteris pinnata, have been claimed by Renault as 

 belonging to Zygopteris, and it appears to me extremely probable that the 



1 Renault (4) and (5). " Grand' Eury (1), t. 17. 3 Renault (4). Grand' Eury (1), t. 17. 

 * Germar (1), t. 33, ff. i, 2. 



