206 Professor A. C. Seward— Fossil Plants from Egypt. 
in the desert east of the Nile. Collected by Mr. P. C. A. Stewart, of 
the Egyptian Geological Survey. 
This specimen (10cm. in length) is part of a compound frond 
very imperfectly preserved ; it is impossible to determine whether it 
is part of a bipinnate frond or a piece of a pinna belonging to a 
tripinnate frond. 
Incomplete crowded pinne are given off from a rachis; these are of 
uniform breadth, and bear bluntly rounded pinnules 4mm. in length, 
attached to the pimne axes by the whole of the base (Fig. 2; enlarged 
rather more than four times). The specimen as a whole is practically 
identical in habit with a pinna of the Paleozoic species Pecopteris 
arborescens. The longest pinna is 4:5 cm. long, but when complete it 
must have considerably exceeded this. It is worth noting that the 
pinnules are inclined to the axis of the pinne like the arms of a wide 
open V (Fig. 2a), as in the Wealden fern Weichselia Mantel It is 
impossible to make out the venation characters, but here and there 
one sees traces of a midrib and of lateral veins; in one place I noticed 
what appears to be a lateral connection (Fig. 2) between two of the 
secondary veins. 
While admitting that it is futile to attempt to determine the precise 
nature of the fossil with any degree of certainty, I am inclined to 
favour the comparison with the Wealden Weichselia as the most likely 
guess at affinity. 
Specimen I7[, Fig. 3. (No. 1423.) From Wadi Araba; about 300 
miles north of Edfu, near the shores of the Red Sea. 
The specimen consists of a few fragments of pinne bearing closely- 
set pinnules as shown in Fig. 3; the venation is more clearly. seen in 
the enlarged drawing, Fig. 38a. Accurate identification is almost 
hopeless; it is, however, permissible to suggest that the appearance 
of the pinnules reminds one of a Mesozoic rather than of a Paleozoic 
species. Such a fern as Alukia exilis of Jurassic age presents a close 
resemblance in the form of the pinne to the Egyptian specimen. 
Geological Age of the Rocks from which the Specimens were obtained. 
Specimen I. Clathropteris egyptiaca, sp. nov. Such evidence as 
the fragment affords is primarily in favour of a Rhetic or Lower 
Jurassic age. 
1 Seward: The Wealden Flora, pt. i (Brit. Mus. Catalogue, 1894). See also 
Nathorst: Arch. Ver. Freund. Nat. Meckl., Jahr. 44, 1890. 
