182 



NATURE 



\_Dec. 25, 1879 



order. Heer described similar spines from Bovey as those 

 of a palm, notwithstanding that the regularly spiral 

 arrangement of the clusters is perfectly shown in Mr. 

 Fitch's drawings. 



The second of the specimens is the largest of several 

 branches with leaves, of a Sequoia-like conifer, which 

 abounds in the higher beds east of Bournemouth Pier, 

 yet has not been found in those west of it. The foliage 

 and branching might be almost equally taken for Sequoia 

 gigantea, Araucaria Cunninghami, Creptotneria japonica, 

 or Arthrotaxis selaginoides. The stem is slightly curved 

 and does not branch for ten inches, but then forks into 

 six slightly diverging branchlets, each some six inches 

 long. Two of these terminate in swollen buds which 

 would perhaps have bome cones, and another ends in a 

 compact cluster of budding needles without any swelling, 

 and might have produced the male flower. This branch- 

 let, and the great number of others that have been 

 formed with it, were evidently shed from the trees exactly 

 as they are seen to fall from the similar conifers at Kew. 

 Nothing beyond branches clothed with leaves have been 

 found, and we have only the peculiar Araucaria-like 

 swelling of some of the terminal buds to guide us. On the 

 other hand, branches very strongly resembling these have 

 been found by Baron Ettingshausen at Haring with 

 Sequoia cones attached. I think however that this re- 

 semblance to Sequoia should not at present have too 

 much value attached to it, because both genera appear to 

 have lived contemporaneously, perhaps from Oolitic 

 times, until the present day. 



Ettingshausen has detected what he considers the flower 

 and a scale of Sequoia among the specimens just 

 obtained from the Lower Bournemouth beds, so that the 

 view I put forward that some of the coniferous twigs 

 associated with Bovey ferns were identical with Sequoia 

 Couttsia of Bovey is somewhat confirmed. It is again 

 most fortunate that I was able last year to obtain a twig 

 of one of the commonest Alum Bay conifers, formerly 

 referred to Taxites, Cupressites, &c, with the peculiar 

 fruit of Podocarpus, recognised by Dr. Carruthers, attached 

 to it, and it now seems probable that there are several 

 distinct podocarps in our eocenes. 



The remains of palm obtained this year are few but 

 instructive. I was fortunate in obtaining from a small 

 isolated patch of clay imbedded in sand, the spathe of 

 a palm ; a slab ten inches square covered with over twenty 

 fruit stalks ; and about eighteen inches of the upper part 

 of the broad pinna of a feather palm. There is hardly 

 room to doubt that these all belong to the same species, 

 and its accurate determination in that case is a matter of 

 almost certainty. 



One exceptionally large fossil dicotyledon was obtained. 

 This is a peltate, bluntly lobed leaf fifteen inches long 

 from the foot of the leaf stalk to the tip, and ten inches 

 across, and is considered by Ettingshausen to be near 

 Cecropia. 



Another striking specimen is not only a perfectly new, 

 but one of the finest ferns yet discovered. My attention 

 was called to it by a lady, who was watching my work 

 and whose quick eye caught sight of the unusual 

 venation even before I did, and we gradually brought to 

 light an almost perfect palmate pinna, large enough to 

 occupy a plate in the monograph now being published by 

 the Pateontographical Society. The position of the 

 sori bodering each lobe is distinctly traceable, and this 

 character with its membranous texture and very slender 

 rachis place it almost unmistakably in Adiantum, 1 while 

 the anastomosing veins further define it as belonging to 

 the sub-genus Hewardia, now confined to tropical America. 

 I am the more pleased with this discovery since small 

 mutilated fragments had already attracted my attention 

 and been figured, without our possessing any satisfactory 

 clue to their identity. I have named it Hewardia regia. 



1 Or possibly Lindsaa, sub-genus Schizoloma. 



While on the subject of ferns, I am pained to have to 

 refer again to a statement I made in this paper with re- 

 spect to the well-known eocene representative of 

 Osmunda javanica. The Rev. Prof. Heer cannot 

 take the expression of an opinion different to his own, in 

 the spirit in which it is meant, however courteously it 

 may be expressed, and I regret that I have hitherto had 

 the misfortune to feel compelled to differ from his con- 

 clusions upon almost every subject. In a footnote to a 

 small pamphlet entitled " Die Aufgaben der Phyto- 

 Palaeontologie," which was only accidentally brought under 

 my notice, he replies in a manner which renders further 

 discussion impossible. He affects to suppose that I, a 

 much younger man, would venture to differ from him with- 

 out having reasons founded on new and positive data to 

 justify my doing so. I select one of the instances in which 

 he thinks proper to tell me I do not speak the truth, not 

 because this one is more easy of proof, but because it imme- 

 diately concerns my present work for the Palseontographi- 

 cal Society. I have accurately traced the figure of what 

 he calls Pecopteris lignilum, the figure of his Dryandra 

 rigida, and a piece of a fossil Osmunda from Bourne- 

 mouth. They are so like each other and unlike anything 

 else that nothing need be added. Heer's voluminous work 



Heer (Skopau). 



A spidium lignUiim, 

 Heer (Skopau). 



Osmunda UgnUunt 



(Uouruem uth). 



has certainly not tended to simplify the determination of 

 this particular fossil. He had described it as Aspidium 

 /ignitum,' Dryandra rigida; and Pecopteris lignilum,^ 

 supposing it to be a Hemitelia, and not until two years after 

 Stur 4 had proved it to be an Osmunda, does it appear in 

 one of his works, without further explanation, as Osmunda 

 Kgnitum? Vet the fossil agrees with the well-known O. 

 javanica, which ranges from Kamschatka to Java, so 

 exactly, and in such minute particulars (as detailed in 

 the second part of our monograph upon ferns, in course 

 of publication) that it seems impossible to excuse such a 

 series of mistakes. With unexampled carelessness he 

 has permitted the lithographer, in every one of the works 

 quoted, to distort and make the leaf an impossible one 

 by colouring the lower pair of veins as if they were the 

 margins of the leaf. Having decided, in his own mind, 

 in d'escribing the flora of Bovey Tracey, that this Os- 

 munda was a tree fern, he connected with it, stems, 

 young shoots, and wh it lie calls rhizomes, which never 

 belonged to it, the latter resembling the stem of the 

 Australian grass tree. Two very characteristic statements 

 are founded on this erroneous belief, one that " in the 

 shade of the forest throve numerous ferns, one species of 

 which {Pecopteris lignilum) seems to have formed trees 

 of imposing grandeur," the other, that its stems with those 

 of Sequoia "certainly contribute the greatest amount of 

 lignite." The real facts are that this was not at all an 

 arborescent fern, and that no vestiges even of the trunks of 



' '• Beitrag zunSher. Kemun. d. SSchs-thQiing. Braunkfi." (PI. ix. Fig.2 ) 



* Idem. (PI. x. Fig. 15.) 



3 Phil. Traus. vol. clii. p- 1047- lS<31 - , „ . , , „ , 



♦ 0. ( irutschreiberi, Stur. Jahrbuck h.h. gcol.-Reichsaustalt, vol. xx. p. 9. 

 5 Jahrtuch dcr k. tmgar.-poL Austalt, vol. ii. 1872. 



