PLANT-REMAINS OF DOUBTFUL AFFINITY, ETC. 371 



an expanded rim. Attached to it is a globular process with its upper 

 extremity somewhat emarginate and even spread out into a small flat 

 surface. This flask-like body is ornamented externally with radiating 

 striae or even with a polygonal mesh-work, which is regarded by authors 

 as the remains of crowded anthers, attached to the extremity of the flask- 

 shaped axis. O. Feistmantel l has figured a doubtful specimen which also 

 perhaps represents the cast of a Williamsonia. The involucre of surround- 

 ing leaves is formed according to Saporta of several series, the leaves 

 in which increase successively in length. The stalk, which bears the whole 

 structure and which is covered with lanceolate leaves lying one on another 

 like scales, has been preserved only in a very few cases. The leaves are 

 of a firm and solid character, and have a keel in the middle of the dorsal 

 side ; according to Saporta 2 they show an anastomosing nervation like that 

 of Dicotyledons. I have myself been unable to discover anything of the 

 kind in the specimen in the Paris Museum, in which he observed it, and a 

 French botanist who examined the piece with me for this purpose was not 

 more successful. 



In the same beds are found peculiar circular disks with a funnel-shaped 

 depression, and with the margin slit into long lanceolate lobes. According 

 to Williamson 3 each of these lobes bears not far from its base an ovoid 

 projection formed of two parallel ridges, which Saporta however did not 

 find in the specimens to which he has had access. While Williamson sees 

 in these disks the remains of female flowers (he terms them ' carpellary 

 disks') and in the projections traces of the ovules, Saporta and Marion 

 think that they are only terminal expansions of the above-mentioned flask- 

 shaped axis of the male flowers, and they consider that they have found 

 the two in connection with one another. They say on this point 4 : ' This 

 expansion was the upper termination of the male apparatus and might be 

 compared to the spongy cushion at the top of the spadix of Amorphophal- 

 lus : one might even be tempted to see in it something analogous to the 

 circle of leaves above the inflorescence in Ananas. The organ in question 

 is certainly the result of a transformation of the upper leaves of the branch 

 which has been changed into a spadix.' It is to be hoped that a publica- 

 tion yet to come from Saporta will contain further and more convincing 

 particulars on this subject. 



There are moreover certain other objects which Saporta and Marion 

 have considered to be female fructifications of our plant. For these they 

 refer especially to a specimen found by Nathorst 5 in Cloughton Bay on the 

 coast of Yorkshire, and named Williamsonia Leckenbyi. Close beside an 



1 O. Feistmantel (1), n, t. 3, f. 3. a Saporta et Marion (2), p. 23?- * Williamson (10), 



t. 52, f. i and t. 53, f. 2. 4 Saporta et Marion (2), p. 240. 5 Nathorst (8), t. 8, f. 5. 



B b 2 



