482 Professor A. C. Seward — Fossil Plants from Cape Colony, 



90 years of age — both iu the enjoyment of good health, and still 

 interested in their favourite studies, would afiford the strongest 

 recommendation to all, not already enrolled, to join at once the noble 

 ibrotherhood of the hammer. 



It is hoped that this note may convey to these fathers of science in 

 their peaceful retirement not only our own earnest good wishes, but 

 those of many other of their geological friends and admirers. 



II. — Notes on Fossil Plants fkom the Witteberg Series of 

 Cape Colony. 



By A. C. Seward, F.E.S., Cambridge. 



(PLATE XXVIII.) 



THE specimens described below were sent to me for examination 

 by Professor, Schwarz from the Albany Museum, Grahamstown; 

 they were collected from a thin seam of shale in the Grahamstown 

 district in the Witteberg Series. This series, so named from the 

 Wittebergen in the south of the Karroo, consists of a group of shales, 

 sandstones, and quartzites, which are placed at the summit of the 

 Cape Series below the plant-bearing and glacial beds of the Lower 

 Karroo system. The Witteberg Series have afforded a very few 

 fo§sils ; these include imperfectly preserved fragments of Lepido- 

 dendroid plants and an abundance of the fossil known as Spirophi/ton, 

 referred by some authors to the vegetable kingdom and by others 

 regarded as probably inorganic.^ 



In a paper published in the Pecords of the Albany Museum, 

 Professor Schwarz - has described the following new species based on 

 material which does not admit of satisfactory diagnosis : Lepidodendron 

 allanense, L. howiense, Bothrodendron irregulare, JB. ccespitosum, Didymo- 

 phyllimi {Stiymaria) expansum. So far as it is possible to base an 

 opinion on bis published drawings, I am disposed to regard the 

 specimens as possibly referable to a single type. The fossils sent to 

 me are larger and apparently in a better state of preservation than 

 those described by Schwarz. 



Bothrodendron irreyulare, Schwarz. PI. XXVIII, Pigs. 1-4. 



Under this name Mr. Schwarz has described "a common species 

 occurring in the quartzites and intercalated shales of the Witteberg 

 Series at Port Alfred, near Grahamstown".^ As the small specimen 

 which he figures as the type of Bothrodendron irreyulare is no doubt 

 identical with some at least of those described below, I have adopted 

 his designation. The fossils which I refer to Bothrodendron irreyulare 

 include two fairly distinct forms : ( 1 ) impressions and casts of small 

 branches characterized by crowded scars or tubercles and showing in 

 a few cases portions of acicular leaves; (2) larger branches characterized 



1 Seward, Annals S. African Museum, 1903, vol. iv, p. 103. 

 - Records of the Albany Museum, 1906, vol. i, p. 347. 

 ^ Schwarz, loc. cit., p. 356, pi. vi, fig. 4. 



