336 CALAMARIEAE. 



of the lobes of the sheath. They are peculiar in form, being a little com- 

 pressed on one side. They are comparatively very large and are marked 

 with a very fine striation in an oblique direction, which may be distinguished 

 even when they have fallen from the sheath which bore them and lie 

 about beside and between the specimens, as is usually the case. The 

 positions of the entire spikes in the stone are peculiar; they either lie 

 horizontally on the surface of the beds, or, which is the more common case, 

 the slender axis is vertical to the beds, and the separate whorls are spread 

 out flat on their surfaces. This would imply that the whorls were still 

 stiff and rigid when they were buried. Though the spikes usually occur 

 very many together I found a block of stone on the refuse-heap of the 

 Skalley mine which contained hundreds of them yet the vegetative organs 

 which bore them are scarcely known ; a few specimens only have been 

 found, in which one or two spikes were attached to bits of articulated 

 striated branches resembling those of Calamitae 1 . I did not succeed in 

 finding more of the same kind on the occasion referred to, though I looked 

 for them very carefully. Brongniart's 2 Equisetum infundibuliforme may 

 also belong to Cingularia. Only the sterile whorls are disclosed by the 

 fracture. I have seen specimens in Goldenberg's collection at Saarbriicken, 

 which were evidently Cingulariae and which answered to Brongniart's figure. 



There is another quite peculiar fossil, supposing the reconstruction of 

 it to be correct, which has been described by Williamson 3 , and which was 

 found, unfortunately only in a small fragment, as a petrifaction in a 

 calcareous nodule from Lancashire. Its hollow axis shows the usual 

 peripheral lacunae which answer to the primary bundles, but here they 

 are curiously approximated to one another in pairs. According to Wil- 

 liamson's account there was only one kind of whorl, in which the leaves 

 were united below into a somewhat concave plate and prolonged above 

 into numerous erect free apices. The sporangiophores are supposed to 

 have been placed on the inner side of the basal plate of the leaf-whorl, 

 and the sporangia to have been attached to them. But the small size 

 and the imperfect state of this fossil give room for many doubts. 



The genus Bowmanites, Binney, is also founded on some problematical 

 remains. The type is Bowmanites cambrensis 4 , which was found in some 

 clay iron-stone workings near Hartypool in South Wales, and appears for 

 the most part only in the form of a mould. The chief portions of it are 

 lost ; two which were saved are in Binney's collection, which during my 

 many visits to Manchester was always inaccessible. The figures too are 

 partly from sketches by the former owner of the specimen, Mr. Bowman. 

 The compact cylindrical spike surrounded by long erect leaf-tips is attached 



1 Weiss (6), t. 7, f. i, and t. 9, f. i. a Brongniart (1), vol. i, t. 12, f. 16. 3 Williamson (8). 

 4 Binney (1), II, t. 12. 



