124 MR. E. A. NEWELL ARBER ON TRIASSIC SPECIES 
on branches. They also strongly resemble detached leaflets of the Upper Carboniferous 
genus Neggerathia *, whose affinities remain wholly doubtful. 
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 
The two fossils described here belong to a flora as yet paratively little known. 
Both are derived from approximately the same horizon, the Keuper; the one from 
England, the other from Carinthia. Among the known fossil plants of Cycadophytean 
uffinity they may be considered as exceptional instances of megaphylly. Yet as regards , 
mere size they are in no way remarkable when compared with the fronds of many 
species of living Cycads. ] 
The specimens discussed here under the name Zemites grandis, nom. nov., illustrate 
the difficulties which arise as a corollary of the fragmentary preservation of such large 
fronds. In nearly every ease the pinnz have become detached, and usually the leaflets 
themselves are incomplete. Such impressions are often extremely difficult to determine. 
It has been shown here that the long Monocotyledon-like leaves, often nearly 50 em. 
in length, which have recently been discovered in the Keuper rocks of Bromsgrove, are in 
reality the large detached pinn:e of a Cycadophytean frond belonging to the form-genus 
Zamites. This conclusion has thrown light on a considerable number of similar Mesozoic 
fossils, previously described under the names Yuccites, Cordaites, Bambusium, &c., and 
regarded as evidence of the existence of Monocotyledons, Proangiospermeze, Cordaitales, 
or other groups in the earlier Mesozoic rocks. | 
The fronds of Zamites grandis are practically the first well-preserved plant-remains 
which have ever been described from the British Trias, excluding the Rhætic. Only a 
few obscure impressions, chiefly of cones and Equisetaceous stems, have hitherto been 
recorded, and even these have proved to be of rare occurrence +. They also fill a gap in 
our knowledge of the vertical distribution of this genus, for Zamites, although known 
from the Palzeozoic rocks, has not hitherto been recognised beyond doubt from Mesozoic 
sediments of earlier age than the Rheetic. Incidentally the recognition of this species 
from England tends to emphasise the close affinity of the fossil plants from the various 
Triassic deposits of Europe, for it is now known from the Bunter of the Vosges, the 
Lower Keuper of Carinthia, and possibly also from the same horizon in Thüringia. 
The other species described here, Pterophyllum Bronni, Schenk, is a very rare type of 
frond, known only from the earlier Triassic rocks of the Continent, and possibly also 
from beds of the same age in the United States. Apart from its large size, it is especially 
interesting on account of the diffieulty of including it within the limits of any of the 
recognised frond-genera of Cycadophyta. It is by no means a typical example of a 
Pterophyllum, though it appears to be on the whole more closely allied to that genus 
than to any other, ; 
* See Solms-Laubach (1891), pp. 141 and 151. : 
t In addition to the specimens described here, Mr. Wills has obtained several other well-preserved plant-remains 
from the same locality in the Keuper of Bromsgrove, which he has also presented to the Sedgwick Museum, 
Cambridge, and is deseribing. 
