TRAQUAIRIA, SPOROCARPON. 



181 



We may pass over certain remains in an extremely bad state of preserva- 

 tion, which have been thus explained by Schmalhausen l without apparent 

 reason and have been figured by him ; but this author has also described 

 and figured 2 some highly remarkable objects as fructifications of his Phyllo- 

 theca deliquescens. I had opportunity of seeing the second of his two 

 specimens in Strassburg, where it had been sent by him from St. Peters- 

 burg to be prepared. It is admirably rendered in the drawing in Fig. 17, 

 B. A striated axis with sheaths thoroughly like those of Phyllotheca 

 bears on the internodes between the sheaths in a lateral position certain 

 small organs, which are exactly like 

 the sporangiferous peltate disks of our 

 Equiseta. They lie indeed in number? 

 all round the axis in the interval between 

 every two sheaths. The other specimen 

 has just the same appearance, but only 

 one sterile sheath is preserved in it 

 together with portions of the two ad- 

 joining internodes. 



Since these specimens have both 

 of them the characteristic foliar sheaths 

 of Phyllotheca, it seems unreasonable to 

 doubt whether they belong to that 

 genus, which would thus differ from true 

 Equisetaceae in having its fertile spikes 

 repeatedly interrupted by ordinary vege- 

 tative leaf-whorls. But in any case 

 Heer 3 is not justified in uniting with 

 his Phyllotheca sibirica two spikes of 

 another species, which he thinks himself 

 are very like those of Ginkgo, merely 

 because they lie beside it in the speci- 

 men, and then going on to speak of 

 different types c which in time will have to be made into separate genera.' 



All that we know of fossil Hydropteridae is so small, so fragmentary, 

 and for the most part so doubtful, that we may proceed at once to give 

 some account of them. From the group of Marsileaceae Heer 5 describes 

 the fruit-capsules of a Pilularia from Oeningen ; Marion 6 has found in the 

 Upper Eocene beds of Ronzon (Haute Loire) an opened capsule, which has 

 since been recognised by A. Braun 7 as the fruit of a Marsilea (M. Marioni, 



FIG. 17. Phyllotheca, Zigno. A Ph. equiseti- 

 formis from Rovere di Velo near Verona. B in- 

 florescence from Siberia, placed by Schmalhausen 

 with Phyllotheca. A from a specimen collected by 

 myself, B after Schmalhausen 4 . 



1 Schmalhausen (1), t. 9, f, 17. 2 Schmalhausen (1), t. i, f. 3, and t. 9, f. 16. 

 vol. 6 i, p. 9 ; t. i, f. 5, * Schmalhausen (1), 5 Heer (3), vol. iii, t. 145. 

 7 A. Braun (2). 



3 Heer (5), 

 6 Marion (2). 



