FOSSIL PLANTS. 93 
should have specimens closely resembling those figured by Dr. Emmons. 
Of these, one (his Fig. 83) represents the middle part of the frond; the other 
(Fig. 82) is from a higher portion. This is inferable from the fact that in 
one the rachis is stronger and the pinnules are more separated and diverge 
at a larger angle than in the other. 
Dr. Emmons does not describe the nervation, but represents it as fine 
and parallel. This would exclude it from the genus Cycadites, in which the 
pinnules are traversed by a strong midrib. Both Dr. Emmons’s species and 
that now figured belong clearly to Dioénites, as defined by Schimper." 
LOPERIA SIMPLEX, N. sp. 
Ply XEXV, Figs. 1, 25/3. 
One of the most common plants found in the Trias at Durham, as 
usually seen, is a straight, smooth, unjointed stem, once cylindrical, but 
now much compressed and replaced by jet. Of some of these stems por- 
tions have been obtained an inch or more in width and twelve or fifteen 
inches in length, but the plant was evidently a large one, and these are 
mere fragments of it. Recently Mr. 8. W. Loper has found specimens which 
show more of this organistn than was before known, and some of these are 
represented in our plate. Of these, that best preserved consists of a stem 
such as I have described, but which divides above into a number of 
branches, all springing from the same point. These branches are slender 
and flexuous, and bear what seem to be alternate, linear, acute, grass-like 
leaves, but in their state of preservation showing no nervation. This is ap- 
parently the same plant as that figured by Emmons? and copied by Fon- 
taine.’ Professor Fontaine refers to these specimens on pages 119 and 120,* 
and ‘‘for convenience of reference” gives them the name of Bambusium 
Carolinense. I venture to substitute for that name the one now given, as it 
is quite certain that the plants under consideration had no close botanical 
relationship with Bambusa (the Bamboo), which is a grass, and, like all the 
Graminec, has jointed stems. Without more material it will be impossible 
to determine with any certainty the botanical relations of this plant, but it 
was most probably monocotyledonous, perhaps aquatic—a kind-of gigantic 
1 Paléontologie végétale, vol. 2, p. 147. 3 Monograph cited, pl. LII, figs. 1, 2, 
?Am, Geol., pt. 6, 1857, pp. 131, 132, figs. 99, 100, 4 Op. cit, 
