164 



FILICES. 



Before leaving the Rhachiopteridae and going on to fern-stems, it is 

 necessary to mention one fossil, which, if it is really the leaf-stalk of a Fern, 

 would show what great anatomical differences, unheard of in our modern 

 vegetation, must have been exemplified in the ferns of the old deposits. I 

 speak of Goppert's J Sphenopteris refracta from the Carboniferous Limestone 

 of Glatzisch-Falkenberg in Silesia. I am indebted to the kindness of F. 

 Romer for a knowledge of several specimens from the Museum at Breslau, 

 which I hope to be able to examine more thoroughly at some future time. 

 Among them was the original specimen studied by Goppert ; the sections 



which he had before him could 

 not be found. The specimens are 

 irregularly-shaped fragments of very 

 hard calcareous grauwacke, which 

 are traversed in every direction by 

 thin black lines, and show here and 

 there, but not often, minute bits of 

 the pinnae of Sphenopteris. The 

 one figured by Goppert *, however, 

 is not to be found in the original 

 stone, .and was probably taken 

 from another specimen. The frag- 

 ments also contain longer portions 

 of stalks which are often broken in 

 the longitudinal direction, and have 

 their structure well preserved. The 

 connection of all these pieces, 

 though it may be assumed to be 

 probable from the peculiar penetra- 

 tion of the stone, has not however been certainly established ; for it does not 

 appear even from Goppert's remarks, which are unhappily too brief, whether 

 the rhachis through which his section passed was in direct connection with 

 an evident fragment of a leaf-blade. For this reason I cannot at once 

 dismiss Unger's 3 opinion as untenable, though I do not myself share it. 

 He declares that the structure of this piece of leaf-stalk shows that it 

 cannot have belonged to a fern-leaf. Certainly its anatomy as illustrated 

 by Goppert's beautiful figures is so peculiar, that I know nothing with 

 which it can be directly compared (see Fig. 15). First there is a moderately 

 thick outer rind formed of tolerably uniform thick-walled parenchyma- 

 cells arranged in radial rows. Beneath this is a rnuch compressed and 

 inconspicuous tissue, a collection of larger and smaller woody masses of 

 irregular horseshoe-shape, which all turn their concavity outwards, and 



I'li;. 15. Transverse section of the leaf-stalk of Sphenop- 

 teris refracta, Gopp. ; each vascular bundle surrounded by 

 a horseshoe-shaped secondary growth with its convexity 

 turned towards the centre ; the bundle is seen in the sinus. 

 After Goppert with some alteration. 



1 Goppert (12 . 



Goppert (12), t. 12, f. 2. 



Unger (5). 



