546 E. A. N. Arher — Fossil Plants from India. 



more generalized forms may eventually be unearthed. Up to the 

 present time it has been maintained, by some authors at least, that 

 at the close of the Pliocene or commencement of the Pleistocene 

 period a great immigration of the Europasian ungulates took place 

 into Africa ; whereas the recent discoveries in Egypt show this theory 

 to be untenable, as it was in the ancient African Continent itself 

 that the elephants, and possibly some other groups, were evolved. 



III. — Notes on Eoyle's Types of Fossil Plants from India. 



By E. A. Newell Arber, B.A., 



Trinity College, Cambridge ; University Demonstrator in Palseobotany. 



IN his Illustrations of the Botany of the Himalayan Mountains, 

 published in 1839, Eoyle ^ figures several important fossil 

 plants from the Burdwan Coalfield of India. These are of especial 

 interest, not only as being the first mention of several of the best 

 known fossil types from the Lower Gondwanas of India, but also 

 as among the earliest descriptions of members of the Glossopteris 

 flora. 



Eoyle's types are now in the Geological Department of the British 

 Museum (Natural History), Cromwell Eoad. The object of this 

 notice is to call attention to the whereabouts of these types, and to 

 some of the more important morphological features which they 

 present. A full account of the literature, in which reference is 

 made to these fossils, will be found in Feistmantel's - Flora of the 

 Lower Gondwanas of India, and need not be recapitulated here. 

 The horizon in the Lower Gondwanas, from which these plants were 

 obtained, is the Eaniganj group of the Damuda Series. 



Sphenophtllum speciosum (Eoyle). [V. 4,190.] '" 



1837. Trizygia speciosa, Eoyle : ibid., p. xxix*, pi. ii, fig. 8. 



1881. ,, ,, Feistmantel: ibid., p. 69, pis. iia, xiia, figs. 1, 2. 



The type figured by Eoyle under the name Trizygia speciosa is 

 a very interesting one. It is a fine specimen, 6 inches long and 

 2-| inches across, and showing nine whorls of leaves. The stem is 

 slender, -3-2 --^^g inch across. The internodes have two fairly 

 prominent longitudinal ridges, but the preservation is not sufficiently 

 good to show that these ridges are continuous at the node. Each node 

 bears a whorl of three pairs of leaves, unequal in size, and con- 

 sisting of four elongate-ovate, entire, and spreading leaves, 1^ inch 

 long by f inch broad, and a smaller pair, | inch by f inch, ovate 

 and reflexed. The successive whorls are superposed. 



In the arrangement and unequal size of the leaves, S. speciosum 

 differs from the majority of European Sphenophyllums, to which, 



1 Eoyle : * ' Illustrations of the Botany and other branches of Natural History of 

 the Himalayan Mountains, and of the Flora of Cashmere " ; London, 1839. 



^ Feistmantel, "The Fossil Flora of the Gondwana System": Mem. Geol. 

 Suiv. India, 1881, ser. xii, vol. iii. (The Flora of the Damuda and Panchet 

 Divisions, 1880.) 



^ Eegistered number of specimen in the Geological Department, British Museum. 



