FBIRNS— MEGALOPTEEIDE.E— T.ENIOPTERIS. 143 



certain species referred by Stur^ and Zeiller- to Besmopteris Stur, which 

 has a somewhat different nervation, though it appears to be alHed to the 

 Alethopteroid group. It also bears a strong resemblance to Aletliopteris 

 magna Grand 'Eury.^ In the latter, however, the mode of division is more 

 irregular, the pinnules more heteromorphous and not so contracted at the 

 base, while the nervation is nuich more distinctly Alethopteroid. 



My reference of the Missouri species to Tceniopteris is provisional. 

 The fern is in its habit, and to some extent its nervation, evidently closely 

 related to Alethopteris. As suggested above, it should perhaps be included 

 in the same genus with Danmites (Aletliopteris) macrophylla (Newb.) Lx.; but 

 from the character of the rachis, midrib, form of pinnules and the nervation, 

 and from the observed development of the upper part of some of the 

 Tseniopteroid forms in the older Mesozoic and Carboniferous, I have been 

 led to place it among the Tcemopterldece-, and, notwithstanding the high degree 

 of its superficial identity with the Marattiaceous forms (;omparable in their 

 fructification to Dancea or Angiopteris, it seems better, in default of all 

 knowledge of the fruiting of our species, to refer it to the genus Tceniopteris, 

 the former resting place of many of the Mesozoic species, rather than to 

 the equivocal genus Danmtes. It is certainly ineligible to admission in the 

 Danceites of Goeppert and Stur. The name Danceites, in the sense in which 

 it is employed by Heer and Schimper, should, if used at all, perhaps be 

 applied to those species only of which either the fruiting is known or the 

 generic identity with other contemporaneous fruiting species is by other 

 evidence satisfactorily proved, leaving their apparent representatives from 

 the Paleozoic, the fruiting of which is not known, in the convenient and 

 noncommittal genus Tmuopteris, without presupposing any direct genetic 

 relation to any particular fruiting genus 



The broader application by European paleobotanists of the name 

 Tceniopteris to pinnate forms with narrower leaves, as well as the resem- 

 blance, in many respects, of our plant to the Tceniopteris jejunata, has further 

 influenced me in placing this form, which has so close an affinity with 

 Alethopteris, in the abo^'e-named genus. Perhaps it belongs more properly 

 in Aletliopteris. 



' Carbon. -Fl. Schatzlarer Sch., vol. i; see D. belgica Stur, p. 181, pi. lii, figs. 7-9. 

 -Fl. Foss. houill. Valenciennes, p. 216, pi. xxxvlii, figs. 3-5. See Ettingshanseu, Fl. Radnitz, 

 p. 40, pi. xvi, figs. 2-4. 



^G^ol. pal. bassin houill. Gard, p. 290, pi. xs, figs. 5, 6. 



