1877.) 1 73 {Lesquereux. 
nian one may expect to find remains of the Pine family in older forma- 
tions. When therefore we get from the Silurians fragments of leaves of 
Cordaites (a probable discovery, for they have been found abundant in 
the Devonian) we shall have all the essential types of the plants of the Car- 
boniferous ftora already represented in the oldest paleozoic times. 
A Species of Fungus recently discovered in the shales of the Darlington Coal 
Bed (Lower Productive Coal Measures, Alleghany River Series) at 
Cannelton, in Beaver County, Pennsyloania. 
By Lro LESQUEREUX. 
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, October 19, 1877.) 
The discovery of a Fungus in connection with plants of the coal meas- 
ures is not less remarkable than that of land plants in the Silurian. 
Lindley and Hutton, in their Fossil Flora of England, 1831-33, have 
represented (plate 65 of the first volume) a kidney shaped, round, flattened 
body, whose outline and surface, marked by zones of alternate density and 
coloring along the borders, recall somewhat the characters of some of the 
hard Fungi seen upon old trunks of the forests at the present time and 
known as Polypores, Bolets, etc., or generally called Sponge-Mushrooms. 
The characters of this fossil organism are so uncertain that the authors 
themselves, though applying to it the Generic name of Polyporites, consider 
as very doubtful its reference to the vegetable kingdom. 
Mr. Bowman, the discoverer to whom the species is dedicated as P. Bow- 
mannt, remarks, that one of his specimens might be taken for the scale of 
a fish or of some great Saurian. Since that time no kind of remains refer- 
able to Fungi has been seen in the coal, except one specimen found in the 
Anthracite measures near Pottsville, Pa. It is apparently identical with 
the English species and does not aflord any more light upon its nature. 
This specimen, however, contradicts by its habitat its reference to the 
animal kingdom, as no remains of this kind are found in the Anthracite 
measures of Pennsylvania. 
But there are in the Tertiary Lignitic of the Rocky Mountains some clay 
beds associated with coal, wherein are intercallated shaly fragments, colored 
have, at our epoch, globular or button-like stems impressed with cicatrices 
of leaves, and sometimes flattened and depressed at the top toward the 
central axis, where the tuft of leaves is coming out. If, therefore, such 
analogy could be admitted, these specimens would confirm the opinion ad- 
vanced in considering the probable reference of the branches inscribed 
above. But this suggestion is too hazardous in its application to remains 
found in connection with Silurian limestone. For after all, these remark- 
able fragments may altogether represent one of those organisms like Uphan- 
tenia, Dictyophytum, etc., whose nature seems to partake of the character 
of land and marine vegetables, and whose relation is still unknown. 
