384 PALAEONTOLOGY OF ILLINOIS. 



NEUROPTERIS FIMBRIATA, Lesqx. 



PL vi, fig. 4. 



Cy dopier is fimbriata, Lesqx. 



Journ. Bost. Soe. Nat. Hist., 1854, p. 416. 



This species has also been published in part, and from isolated leaflets, in 

 the Geol. Rep. of Penn., p. 855, PI. iv., fig. 17 and 18, as a Cyclopteris. The 

 specimens now on hand represent it with a pinnate frond having an undulating, 

 flexuous, round, finely striate rachis, marked with points as if it had been 

 scaly, which bears alternate, distant, broadly oblong or, ovate, sometimes nearly 

 round leaflets, entire at the round auriculate base, attached to the rachis by a 

 broad pedicel. These leaflets are finely fringed from the middle upwards by 

 long, undulating, narrow laeinise. The veins which come out parallel from 

 the broad pedicel and divide three or four times in ascending, are thin but dis- 

 tinct, slightly arched towards the borders and ascend to the top of the fringes. 

 The specimen figured here from the concretions of Mazon creek, and found by 

 Mr. S. S. Strong, seems to show that the species was a climbing fern resem- 

 bling by its nervation and its mode of division a Lygodium. It has been sup- 

 posed that the fimbriate leaves were the fruiting part of a species, which in its 

 sterile form has entire leaflets, as it happens with some ferns of our time. But 

 the fringe is not inflated, and the lacinise, though very distinct in some speci- 

 mens, do not show any trace of remains of sporanges. Like the former spe- 

 cies, this one is, by its nervation, a Nephropteris, at least so far as it is known. 

 It varies much in the size of its leaflets, some being still smaller than those 

 figured here, while most of the others found detached from the stem, and 

 which are broad oval or nearly round in outline, are about two inches or more 

 in diameter. It is one cf the finest and rarest species of our Coal Measures, 

 though it has been found at different places over the whole extent of the N. 

 American coal fields. When this species was first published, no plant of this 

 kind had yet been found in the Coal Measures of Europe, but recently Prof. 

 Heer has given in his Urwdtder Schweiz, under the name of Neuropteris lace- 

 rata, Heer, 1. cit., p. 12, fig. 11, a species which has a near relation to ours. It 

 is a round leaflet, bordered by a narrow fringe, which, unlike ours, is nearly 

 regular with equal narrow divisions. As far as can be seen from a mere wood- 

 cut, the species is a truly different one. Prof. W. P. Schimper, in his Palfeon- 

 tologie vegetale, seems to consider both species as identical, for he says of Neu- 

 ropteris (Cyclopteris) lacerata, Herr, that it is found at Saarbruck and in some 

 places in North America. If both species are identical, our name has the 



