512 Notices of Memoirs — Dr. A. S. Woodward — Gyracanthides. 



Equisetaceous plants, wliicb are best described as Horsetails with 

 much thicker stems than those of their modern descendants. 



Passing to the Peninsula of India, we find the genus Glossopteris 

 abundantly represented in strata which there is good reason for 

 regarding as homotaxial with the European Trias, and the 

 occurrence in the same beds of some other genera of Permo- 

 Carboniferous age shows that the change in the character of the 

 southern vegetation at the close of the Palgeozoic era was much 

 more gradual than in the north. 



The comparative abundance of plant remains in the northern 

 hemisphere in rocks belonging to the Ehsetic formation is in 

 welcome contrast to the paucity of the records from the underlying 

 Triassic strata. From Virginia and adjacent districts in the 

 United States a rich flora has been described, which by some 

 authors is assigned to the Keupei- or Upper Triassic series, while 

 others class it as Ehgetic. A similar assemblage of plants is known 

 also from the Lettenkohle beds of Austria, which, as Stur has 

 shown, clearly belong to the same period of vegetation as the 

 American flora. 



{To be continued.) 



II. — On some Dinosaurian Bones from South Brazil. By 

 A. Smith Woodward, LL.D., F.E.S. 



THE author had received from Professor H. von Jhering a few 

 cervical vertebra and phalangeal bones of a reptile discovered, 

 by Dr. Fischer in red rocks in the province of Eio Grande do Sul, 

 Brazil. He described these remains, and suggested that they 

 belonged to a short-necked Dinosaur. The ungual phalanges were 

 especially remarkable, apparently unique, in being deeply concave 

 on their inferior face and having a very sharp rim. Comparison 

 seemed to show that, among known Dinosaurs, the cervical vertebrge 

 most closely resembled those of ^ushelesaurus from the Karoo 

 formation of South Africa. The newly -discovered bones were 

 therefore probably the first traces of the Gondwana-land terrestrial 

 fauna, the discovery of which had long been expected in South 

 America. 



III. — On a Carboniferous Acanthodian Fish, Gyracanthides. 

 By A. Smith Woodward, LL.D., F.E.S.' 



THE author exhibited and described a restored drawing of Gyra- 

 canthides from the Carboniferous of Victoria, Australia. The 

 fossil had pectoral fin-spines much like those named GijracantJius 

 from the Carboniferous of the northern hemisphere, but these spines 

 lacked posterior denticles. The fish was either toothless or with 

 minute teeth which had escaped observation. It was covered with 

 dense shagreen, but there were no enlarged plates round the eyes. 

 The body was depressed and broad in front, with a small and not 



1 Abstract of paper read before the British Association, Southport, Section C 

 (Geology), September, 1903. 



