XIII. 



CALAMARIEAE. 



IT was long believed that there was no group of extinct palaeozoic 

 plants in which the affinities were more distinctly recognised and determined, 

 than in that of the Calamarieae which we have now to consider. But this 

 belief has been so far shaken at the present day, that it is not even possible 

 to give such a connected account of the actual material and of the results 

 which have been obtained from its investigation, as those which have ap- 

 peared in the former chapters of this work. The best plan therefore will 

 be, first to give a short summary of the facts and of the views entertained 

 respecting them, next to consider separately the different categories of 

 fossil remains which have been referred to the group, and lastly to append 

 a critical examination of the conclusions which have been founded upon 

 them. We begin with the stems and branches usually united together 

 under the name Calamitae, and shall go on to the smaller leafy branches 

 and to the fructifications which have been assigned to them. 



Calamitae are found in enormous quantities throughout the entire 

 series of Carboniferous deposits. They are the well-known fluted stems 

 .divided into members at regular intervals and often attaining colossal 

 dimensions, which appear in the form of impressions and casts. Their 

 resemblance in habit to Equisetae is so great, that it soon came to be the 

 one generally insisted upon, and the comparisons with the bamboo-cane 

 and similar stems, such as occur in the oldest authors, Steinhauer l for 

 example, were soon forgotten. As early as 1828 Brongniart 2 placed Equi- 

 setum and Calamites side by side as equivalent genera of Equiseteae, and 

 in the latter genus among other forms he placed Calamites Mougeotii and 

 C. arenaceus, which have since that time been determined to be casts of 

 the central cavities of Triassic Equisetitae, as was stated above on p. 177- 

 In contrast to Equisetitae, whose leaf-sheaths are often preserved in the 

 form of impressions, the leaves of Calamitae are unusually rare. They 



1 Steinhauer (1). a Brongniart (4). 



