XVI. 



PLANT-REMAINS OF DOUBTFUL AFFINITY, IN WHICH THE 



CHARACTER OF THE SURFACE ONLY IS KNOWN, 



WHILE THE STRUCTURE IS UNKNOWN. 



THE name Vertebraria, Royle has been given to some obscure fossil 

 remains known at present only from the Damuda beds of India which are 

 probably Triassic, and from the Newcastle beds of New South Wales. I 

 have had the opportunity of seeing many specimens of these remains in the 

 British Museum, and in the collection of Professor Boyd Dawkins at Man- 

 chester. The name comes from Royle l , who published good figures of his 

 Vertebraria, but unfortunately without description of any kind. Some 

 account of these remains and a full report of the literature will be found in 

 Bunbury 2 and O. Feistmantel 3 . 



The Vertebrariae are cylindrical simple or more or less copiously 

 branched forms with a circular transverse fracture. They fill the thick 

 beds of a brick-red or brownish-gray stone, often crossing the stratification. 

 The circular transverse section is divided by thin bands of coal, which meet 

 in the centre and spread ray-like to the circumference, into a few wedge- 

 shaped masses, which increase in breadth towards the outside, and when 

 regularly disposed might at first sight suggest a comparison with the 

 surface-view of the leaf-whorl of Sphenophyllum. This comparison has in 

 fact been made by M'Coy 4 , who finds the chief distinction between 

 Sphenophyllum and Vertebraria in the crowding of the successive whorls, 

 which are so close together as to touch one another. If this were so, we should 

 see the spaces which answer to the surfaces of the leaves covered with a 

 layer of coal, whereas they show in most cases only surfaces of fracture of 

 the stone. 



The cylinders are very frequently brought under our observation in 

 radial and tangential longitudinal fractures, and then a strip of coal is seen 

 running down the middle of the cylinder. The radiating bands of coal of 

 the transverse section prove to be so many vertical plates, and appear of 



1 Royle (1), t. 2, ff. 1-7. a Bunbury (2). 3 O. Feistmantel (1), in, p. 84, and Pal. 



Ind. Ser. xn (lower Gondwanas), IT, p. 72 ; tt. 12-14. * M'Coy (1), p. 146. 



