1897 ] CURRENT LITERATURE 67 
unable to refer to these groups. He thought they might represent peculiar 
dicotyledonous leaves. At the same time that Fontaine was working at the 
Potomac flora, Saporta was studying the lower Cretaceous of Portugal. He 
found some true dicotyledons, but other forms he established under a special 
division which he named proangiosperms. One of the important genera 
referable to this group is Protorhipis of Andrae, founded in 1853 upon a 
remarkable form from the Lias of Hungary. This specimen was named ?. 
Buchii, and was considered to be a fern. In the meantime other species 
were described: /. asarifolia Zigno, from the Oolite of Italy; P. integrifolia 
Nath., and P. crenata Nath., from the Rhetic of Sweden; P. reniformis Heer, 
from the Oolite of Siberia; P. cordata Heer, from the Urgonian of Green- 
land; and P. Choffati Sap., from the Urgonian of Portugal. Saporta has 
reviewed all of these species and concludes that they do not belong to the 
ferns, but are truly archetypal angiosperms. Four other genera, Changar- 
niera, Yuccites, Delgadopsis, and Eolirion, are put in the group proangio- 
sperms. These last four genera are considered to be ancestral monocotyle- 
dons. Saporta, however, hesitates to class Protorhipis Buchii, P. integrifolia 
and P. crenata with his proangiosperms, since they lack the distinction of 
midrib and secondary nerves, although they closely resemble certain dicoty- 
ledonous leaves and are aS in nervation with Credneria and some 
fossil viburnums. Certain Potomac forms referred by Fontaine to Meni- 
spermites, Stephen Petey, and Populophyllum, have some 
resemblance to /'rotorhipis Choffati through their areolate nervation, and no 
doubt represent ancestral types of Senate 
Thus the true angiosperms have been traced far below the middle Creta- 
ater Ge jeciaee et Portugal alone containing eight monocotyledons and 
one proangiosperm; and if the forms classed as proangiosperms are truly 
the ewanis of ‘both the monocotyledons and dicotyledons, as Saporta 
considers them, we have an apparent fern origin for the angiosperms.— 
—J. H.S. 
_ Dr. Hersert M. RIcHarps, of Barnard College, has sattieed™ oa an 
account of the development of aecidia _— several hosts, Peltandra, — 
“ : fees b , 
