4 KE. A. Newell Arber—Plants in Carboniferous Limestone. 
II.—A Nore on Foss Prants From tHE CAaRBONIFEROUS LIMESTONE 
or CHEPSTOW. 
By EH. A. Newent Arper, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S. 
HE occurrence of plant-remains in the Lower Carboniferous rocks 
of England is so rare that the recent discovery of impressions in 
beds belonging to that series at Chepstow, by my friend and pupil 
Mr. M. P. Price, B.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, is worthy of 
record. Mr. Price has obtained several examples of a Sphenopterid 
frond and other plant fragments from a bed of sandy shale of about 
4 feet in thickness, lying between a red sandstone below and lime- 
stone beds above, in one of the Pen Moel quarries on the left bank of 
the Wye, immediately to the north of Chepstow. This locality is 
mentioned in Dr. Vaughan’s' recent paper on the paleontological 
sequence in the Carboniferous Limestone of the Bristol area. That 
author informs me that he refers the beds in question to*the lower 
portion of the Seminula-zone (8, of his classification) on the evidence 
of the fauna. 
Considering the sandy nature of the bed, the impressions are fairly 
well preserved. The most abundant plant is a leaf belonging to the 
frond-genus Sphenopteris, which, so far as I can judge, appears to be 
identical with Sphenopteris Teiliana, Kidston,* only known hitherto 
from the Lower Carboniferous beds of Teilia Quarry, Gwaenysgor, 
Flintshire. I have compared the Chepstow fossils with examples 
from the Flintshire beds in the Sedgwick Museum, and on the whole 
they agree very well. In some cases the dichotomous branching of 
the rachis, which is so characteristic of this fern-like plant, is clearly 
seen. The pinnules are indifferently preserved, but the best of them 
resemble fairly closely the specimens from Flintshire. The nervation is 
not, however, preserved ; nor is it to be seen in the examples previously 
known. 
There is also associated with one of these fronds a small fragment 
resembling a fructification, which recalls that figured by Mr. Kidston * 
from Flintshire as ‘‘ the fructification of a fern.”’ A stem structure 
possibly belonging to a fern-like plant is also represented, and shows 
traces of what may perhaps have been petiole-scars, but not very 
clearly. It recalls the appearance of a badly preserved Megaphyton in 
some respects. A branched rachis without foliage, and a small portion 
of an obscurely ribbed cast complete the list of specimens so far 
obtained. 
The discovery of a new locality for Sphenopteris Teiliana is of 
interest. On the evidence of the flora from Teilia Quarry, Mr. Kidston 
inclined to the opinion that the Flintshire beds were the equivalents 
of the Calciferous Sandstone of Scotland. On the other hand, 
Dr. Vaughan‘ has shown that the fauna of the Chepstow deposits 
belongs to the higher series (Viséan) of the Carboniferous Limestone 
1 Vaughan: Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. lxi (1905), p. 251. 
2 Kidston: Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinb., vol. xxxv, pt. 2, p. 424, pl. i, fig, 3, 1889. 
3 Kidston: ibid., p. 426, pl. ii, figs. 8 and 9. 
4 Vaughan: ibid., pp. 251 and 186. 
