> ae a a A 
86 TRIASSIC FISHES AND PLANTS. 
and have supposed were the diaphragms of Equisetum. As these have not 
been before figured I give herewith representations of the flattened base of 
a small one and the conical, striated upper (”?) surface of another, 
Equtsetum Meriant (?) Brong. 
Some years ago Mr. J. B. Woodworth, now of Boston, Mass., then liv- 
ing in Newark, N. J., sent to me, with a number of other fossil plants taken 
from the sandstone quarries near that city, several fragments of a large 
plant which gave no clew to its entire form, but of which the surface was 
differently marked from anything I had before obtained from our Trias. 
The fragments were flattened, only a few inches square, and the surface was 
deeply impressed by a series of parallel, angular furrows and ridges, three- 
eighths of an inch wide. 
The general aspect of the fossil was very like that of a fan-palm, such as 
we frequently find fossilized in the Tertiary rocks. It had also somewhat 
the aspect of a Sigillaria, but the sharply angular form of the folds and 
the absence of leaf scars forbade the supposition that we had here a relic 
of the great fluted trees of the Coal period. 
In reviewing the literature of the Triassic flora I have found' what are 
apparently representations of the same plant. The fossils figured by 
Schenk are considered by him as portions of the stems of Lquisetum Meri- 
ant Brong. (Calamites Meriant Heer), a well-known plant of the Upper Trias 
of Europe, later placed by Schimper in his genus Schizoneura. 
Until the fructification of these Equisetoid plants of the Trias shall be 
found which will permit a better comparison with those of older and later 
formations, itis a useless expenditure of time to discuss the question whether 
they are species of Calamites which have survived from the Carboniferous 
age, are true Hquiseta, or are species of an extinct genus of that family. It 
will be remembered that in the Permian rocks stems of Calamites have been 
found a foot or more in diameter (C. gigas, Brong.), on which the longitud- 
inal ridges are as broad as in the specimens before us, but in these the ribs 
are rounded and not angular, as are those of the specimens from Newark. 
'Schenk’s Beitriige zur Flora des Keupers und der Rhiitischen Formation, Bamburg, 1864, pl. VIII, 
figs. la, 1b. 
