362 Notices of Memoirs — E. T. Neuton on Gasfornis. 



Mr. Thos. Codrington, F.G.S./ I would be glad to state in a sentence 

 or two the results of iny examination. 



Tliese vegetable remains are certainly roots. The method of 

 branching shown in some of the specimens, and shown still better 

 in a pencil-sketch by Major C C King, from a Sarsen which has been 

 weathered in a wall at Abury, leave no doubt as to this. The root- 

 lets leave the main root in every direction at right angles. The 

 roots are in their original position. The soft sand, now indurated by 

 siliceous cement, has been the soil on which the plants grew. An 

 examination of the preparations shows the main stem to have been 

 composed of a small central vascular bundle, surrounded by a con- 

 siderable thickness of soft parenchyma, consisting of uniform cells 

 of short rectangular shape. The cells have not been distorted by 

 pressure, but retain the size and form of the original tissue, — which 

 is a further evidence of the roots being preserved in the position in 

 which they grew. There are not sufficient data in the specimens to 

 enable one to determine with certainty what was the nature of the 

 plants to which the roots belong ; but it appears to me probable that 

 they were monocotyledonous plants ; and they may have been Palms, 

 a group represented in the Eocene Flora of England. 



Gastobnis Klaassenii, Newton. A Gigantic Bird fkom the 

 Lower Eocene of Croydon.^ By E. T. Newton, F.G.S. 



MK. H. M. KLAASSEN, F.G.S., in his paper on the Series of Lower 

 Tertiary Strata exposed in the railway cutting at Park Hill, 

 near Croydon, read before the Geologists' Association (Proc. vol. viii. 

 p. 226, 1883), mentions that he had obtained the remains of a very 

 large bird which would as soon as possible be described. The 

 desci'iption of these most interesting specimens has been delayed, in 

 the hope that additional material might be brought to light, but as 

 there seemed no longer any probability of other specimens being 

 found, a full account of them, with detailed descriptions, was given 

 in a paper read before the Zoological Society on the 5th of May last, 

 and is in due course to appear in the Transactions of that Society. 

 In the mean time the following account of the paper which is pub- 

 lished with the assent of the President, Prof. Flower, may be of in- 

 terest to the readers of the Geological Magazine. 



1 In 1865 Mr. Thomas Codrington, C.E., F.G.S., described in a paper " On the 

 Geology of the Berks and Hants Extension and Marlborough Railways," in the 

 " Magazine Wilts Archseol. Nat. Hist. Soc," 1865, the occurrence of fossilized 

 vegetable tissue in the pipe-like holes traversing some Sarsen Stones lying on tlie 

 ground westward of Little Bedwin. In the " Geological Magazine, new series, 

 Vol. II. 1875, p. 589, Prof. Rupert Jones, noticed some similar tubular cavities 

 in the Sarsen Stones near Frimley, Surrey, and in other geological formations ; 

 and in Geol. Mag., new series, Vol. III. 1876, p. 523, he described similar vegetable 

 marks in the Greywethers or Sarsens of the Chalk Downs near Marlborough, and 

 particularly in the enormous upright stones at Avebury (Abury). These and other 

 similar markings seen elsewhere, are also alluded to by him in the " Trans. Newbury 

 District Field-Club," vol. ii. 1878, p. 249, etc. 



^ Abstract of a paper read before the Zoological Society, May 5th, 1885. 



