254 Professor A. C. Scward—Fossil Plants from Egypt. 
Specimen I. Fig. 1. (No. 10,714.) From the sandstone (Nubian) 
hills east of Edfu, on the watershed between Wadi Dim and the large 
valley flowing east into Wadi Abbad. Latitude approximately 25° N. 
Collected by Mr. H. T. Ferrar, of the Egyptian Geological Survey. 
The specimen is represented natural size in the Figure; it is a 
portion of a fern frond with very clearly marked venation. From the 
base of the fragment seven strong ribs radiate through the lamina in 
a palmate manner; these are represented by grooves with small pieces 
of the axes shown at a and. Two of the ribs are forked near the 
edge of the lamina. From the main veins slender branches are given 
off at right angles, the spaces between them being divided into 
polygonal areas by sail smaller veins, which form a Teton in the 
meshes of which the ultimate veinlets end freely. (The venation is 
shown in the enlarged drawing to the right of Fig. 1.) This type of 
venation is very similar to that of the recent fern Dzpter’s, which 
occurs in Northern India, the Malay region, and elsewhere; it 
characterises also certain Mesozoic genera regarded by some authors 
as members of the family to which Dipteris belongs. The Egyptian 
specimen clearly represents the basal portion of the lamina of a fairly 
large leaf, of which the main scaffolding consisted of dichotomously 
branched palmate ribs. A Liassic fern from Steierdorf, originally 
figured by Andrae as Protorhipis Buchit, exhibits a type of venation 
similar to that shown in Fig. 1. In Protorhipis the veins are less 
spreading and fork at a shorter distance from the base of the la Amina 5 
the leaf as a whole is smaller than that of which the specimen 
before us formed a part. The differences between the species 
described by Andrae’ and the Egyptian example are clearly shown by 
a comparison of Fig. 1 with photographs of the Steierdorf plant 
published by Zeiller* in 1897; other species of the same genus have 
been figured more recently by Von Richter * as species of Hausmannia 
from the Lower Cretaceous of Quedlnburg. 
The fragment shown in Fig. 1 should, a believe, be referred to the 
genus Clathropteri is. In the fossil eenera Dictyophyllum and Clathrop- 
teris the lamina is divided distally into several lobed pinne which 
are coalescent above the petiole into a continuous lamina: it is this 
continuous basal region which is represented in the Egyptian fragment. 
The two ferns Dictyophyllum and Clathropteris are no doubt very 
closely related, but, as Nathorst* says, 1t is probably better to retain 
both names on the ground that a study of a great number of forms 
has convinced him of the existence of well-defined differences. The 
specimen exhibits the rectangular venation characteristic of Clathrop- 
teris, but it is noticeable that in a specimen of C. meniscoides figured 
by Goeppert,? as in those figured by Zeiller® from the Rheetic of 
Tonkin, and by Nathorst* from the Rheetic of Scania, the venation 
Abh. k.k. Reichsanst., Bd. ii, Abt. 3, 1853. 
Rey. Gen. Bot., ix, 1897, pl. xxi. 
Beit. Flora Unt. Kveide Quedlinburg, ee 
Kungl. Svensk. Vetenskaps. Hand., Bd. xli, 5, 1906 ; also ibid., No. 2 
Gattungen foss. Pflanzen, 1841, Lief. 5 and . oe oe Ml, SRK. 
Flor. foss. Tonkin, 190 2. 
Kungl. Syensk. Vetenskaps. Hand., Bd. xl, No. 2. 
ARA Fw dD 
