On the Fossil Plants of the Coal-measures. 293 



Marattiaceae. Slightly modifying M. Bronguiart's generic name, 

 M. Renault designates the plant Myelopteris. 



The author has obtained well-marked examples of this plant from 

 the Lower Coal-measures near Oldham, from a raehis nearly an inch 

 in diameter to the smallest leaf-bearing twigs and leaflet-petioles. 

 It consists of a mass of parenchyma encased in a hypodermal layer 

 of sclerenchymatous prosenchyina, arranged in anastomosing longi- 

 tudinal bands, separated, when seen in tangential sections, by 

 vertically elongated areola? of parenchyma, which latter has probably 

 spread out as a thin epidermal layer investing the entire raehis. 

 These fibrous bands project inwards with sharp wedge-shaped 

 angles ; and in some examples portions of them become isolated 

 as free fibrous bundles, running vertically through the peripheral 

 portion of the inner parenchyma of the raehis. Numerous vascular 

 bundles run vertically through this parenchyma. In transverse 

 sections, not distorted by pressure, these bundles are arranged 

 in some degree of regular order. This is especially the case 

 with a circle composed of the peripheral series of bundles. 

 Their component vessels are spiral in the case of some of the 

 smaller ones, and barred, very rarely reticulate, in a few of the 

 larger vessels. Scattered abundantly throughout the parenchyma 

 are numerous narrow intercellular gum-canals. The majority of 

 these are isolated ; but in most of the specimens there runs side 

 by side with the vessels, and enclosed within the special cellular 

 sheath which imperfectly encloses each bundle, a canal, of varied 

 sizes and shapes, which appears to have been originally a gum- 

 canal, subsequently enlarged irregularly by the shrinking of the 

 neighbouring tissues. In the larger and more matured petioles 

 these vascular bundles are very conspicuous, both in transverse and 

 longitudinal sections ; but in the small, young, and terminal sub- 

 divisions of the rachides the A'essels are so small as to be almost 

 undistinguishable from the surrounding parenchyma, while the 

 gum-canals of such examples are, on the other hand, conspicuously 

 large. Transverse sections of the most perfect examples of these 

 young rachides exhibit, on their upper surface, a rounded central 

 ridge, flanked on either side by a longitudinal groove, which arrange- 

 ments are so conspicuous in the corresponding portions of the 

 petioles of the Marattiaceae and of other ferns. The ultimate 

 leaflet-petioles were given off at right angles to the central raehis 

 from which they sprang, corresponding in this respect with one 

 of the types described by M. Renault. The author has not yet 

 found in Lancashire any of the large specimens that have been 

 met with on the continent at Autun and in the localities whence 

 M. Cotta obtained his examples. He has found a few and yet 

 smaller fragments among the sections from Burntisland. The 

 recognition of the Marattiaceous character of these plants excludes 

 the Palmacece for the present from all claim to share in the glories 

 of the Carboniferous vegetation. 



The second plant described by the author consists of clusters 

 of roots with a portion of the outermost parenchymatous layer of 



