138 



NATURE 



\_y71ne 21, 1877 



of other countries, in many ways worse off than our own. 

 Tlie subject is well worth the attention of all who have at 

 heart the higher education of the people. 



W. Boyd Dawkins 



THE CARBONIFEROUS FLORA OF CENTRAL 

 FRANCE 



Flore Carbonifcre dti Departeinent de la Loire et du 

 Centre de la France. Par Cyrille Grand' Eury, Ingd- 

 nieur .a St. Ktienne. (Imprimerie Nationale, Paris.) 



THIS work consists of three quarto volumes, the first 

 of which is devoted to the plants, the second to the 

 geology of the districts under consideration, and the third 

 forms an atlas with thirty-four plates of fossil plants and 

 four large " tableaux," in which the author has "restored" 

 the plants he has described according to his own ideas of 

 their morphology. 



It is very obvious that the carboniferous plants of one 

 district cannot be received as ahogether typical of those 

 occurring at other and distant localities. Hence such 

 publications as those of Dr. Dawson and Prof. Newbury 

 in America, and the volumes of M. Grand' Eury, are 

 extremely valuable to the English palreo-botanists. They 

 tend to preserve him from the one-sided habit of viewing 

 the subject which he is apt to contract when only study- 

 ing the types occurring in his own coal-fields. But apart 

 from this M. Grand' Eury's work has an independent 

 value, especially in some departments in which he has 

 made important additions to our stock of knowledge. 

 This is especially the case with his investigations amongst 

 the hitherto obscure plants known as Flabellarire and 

 Cordaites, as well as amongst some remarkable sporange- 

 bearing ferns. 



Our knowledge of Cordaites has hitherto been most 

 vague ; but M. Grand' Eury has fortunately obtained 

 some beautiful specimens in which not only the leaves 

 are attached to the stems of several species, but in some 

 he also finds what he believes, I think justly, to be 

 male and female organs of reproduction, thus estab- 

 lishing the point that these plants were monoecious 

 Phanerogams. These organs are slender spikes, some 

 of which support small scaly buds lodged in the axils of 

 bracts, and which the author beheves to have been 

 antheriferous. Others bear single seeds in each axil. 

 Some of the spikes are affirmed to be those of Antho- 

 lithes, and the seeds to be identical with Cardiocarpus. 

 The stems which bear these reproductive structures have 

 a Sternbergian pith, surrounded by an exogenous woody 

 zone inclosed within a distinct bark, which latter appears 

 to have consisted of more than one layer. M. Grand' Eury 

 concludes that these plants were Conifers, of which the 

 well-known Dadoxylons were the ligneous axes, and that 

 the type which survived for a time in some of the 

 Ulmanniae of the Lechstein, and in the Albertia of the 

 Triassic rocks. I see nothing, however, in his figures and 

 descriptions leading me to conclude that they are identical 

 with our British Dadoxylous. 



The new ferns described by the author are equally 

 remarkable. They include numerous forms of Pecopteris, 

 with very peculiar sori approaching those of the Marat- 

 tiaceffi. Some of these fronds he associates unhesitatingly 

 with Psaronius and other stems of tree-ferns. The author's 



researches on the above subjects have been conducted 

 under most favourable conditions, of which he has availed 

 himself in a praiseworthy manner. 



When we come to the debateable subjects of Calamites, 

 Lepidodendron, Sigillarire, and Asterophyllites I am 

 obliged to use different language. On these points the 

 author adopts substantially the ideas of Brongniart. 

 Thus he distinguishes between Calamites and Calamo- 

 dendron, making the former an equisetaceous plant and 

 the latter a gymnospermous one. I cannot understand 

 how anylone can do this in the face of our present know- 

 ledge of the facts. 



In external form the supposed Calamites and Calamo- 

 dendra exhibit precisely the same appearances. All 

 these appearances are explained in the most exact man- 

 ner by the internal structure of the many illustrative 

 specimens which we now possess, and which demonstrate 

 that we only have one type of organisation. Further, 

 what are called Calamites by the school to which our 

 author belongs are amongst the most abundant of the 

 plants furnished by our coal-shales, and there is nothing 

 to prevent their being equally common in the Oldham 

 and other beds, in which all the plants retain their inter- 

 nal structure, if they existed as an independent type. But 

 the moment we find a Calamitean plant with organisation 

 it proves to be a Calamodendron. Even M. Grand' Eury 

 is compelled to admit " il est au moins surprenant que 

 I'on n'ait pas mis la main sur un Calamite avec la struc- 

 ture conservee." Very surprising, indeed, considering 

 that we have obtained such numbers of these plants with 

 structure from Oldham, Halifax, and Autun, as well as, 

 though less abundantly, from Burntisland. The conclu- 

 sion to be drawn is too obvious to need reiteration. 



Imbued with these ideas respecting Calamites and 

 Calamodendra, it was inevitable that M. Grand' Eury 

 should fall into error respecting Asterophyllites. These 

 plants are regarded by his school as the branches and 

 leaves of Calamites. Hence he could not recognise as 

 Asterophyllites any plant which had not a Calamitean 

 axis. But I have shown that Asterophyllites has not 

 such a structure, but one identical with the very different 

 one of Sphenophyllum. M. Grand' Eury escapes the 

 difficulty by contending that my plants are not Astero- 

 phyllites, but Sphenophylla. This is certainly not the 

 case. Brongniart has clearly defined the latter genus a 

 possessing 6-8 or 10 truncate cuneiform leaves ; and after 

 referring to the fructification of Sphenophyllum, he cor- 

 rectly says : — " Ce mode de fructification, malgrd I'ob- 

 scurit^ qui environne encore sa vraie structure, est trop 

 analogue h celui des Asterophyllites pour qu'on puisse 

 douter de I'affinitd de ces deux genres." This conclusion 

 is precisely identical with mine. Instead of 6-8 or 10 

 leaves in each verticil, my plants have 18 or 20. These 

 leaves are linear, not cuneiform ; and as my next 

 memoir will demonstrate even more clearly than I have 

 yet done, each leaf had a single central vascular bundle 

 instead of the two or more invariably seen in Spheno- 

 phyllum. 



In his views respecting the relations of Sigillaria and 

 Lepidodendron, M. Grand' Eury also clings to the old 

 Brongniartian ideas promulgated in bygone years. M. 

 Brongniart and M. Renault have described the organisa- 

 tion of two Sigillarian fragments, S. ele^ans and S. 



