10 Canadian Record of Science. 
Caithness, these leaves were aggregated in the form of a 
tuft apparently proceeding from a common horizontal 
stem. Miller exactly describes their appearance ' when he 
speaks of them as ‘ ribbon-like fronds or branches which 
rose by dozens from a common root, like the fronds of 
Zostera, and somewhat resembled a scourge of cords 
fastened to a handle.” These remains he refers to as 
fucoids. The peculiar appearance they present has more 
than once been commented upon, and in my former paper 
on Parka decipiens, 1 was inclined to regard them as possibly 
representing the leaves of @. minor. So far as the material 
then examined would enable me to judge, there was no 
good ground for disputing this view. ‘The material now in 
hand, however, is of such a nature as to justify an entirely 
different view and lead me to consider them the remains of 
a distinct plant, which, however, is associated with leaves 
of P. decipiens . minor and with stems of Psilophyton, the 
parts of one often bearing a somewhat strong resemblance 
to parts of the others, when such parts are considered 
separately and not in connection with the entire plant. 
In a large flag from Myreton, one of these plants is found. 
As will be seen from the figure, it shows a central axis— 
probably horizontal, from which there arise simple and 
linear leaf-like organs, also other linear organs which re- 
peatedly branch. (Plate II, fig. 1.) The origin of the ribbon- 
like leaves from a horizontal stem is very suggestive, as 
Miller has pointed out, of Zostera, but in comparing this 
fossil with specimens of Zostera in the flowering stage, I find 
the resemblance to be even more striking, since the simple 
filaments are the counterpart of the leaves of that plant 
and the branching filaments are strongly suggestive of the 
inflorescence. Indeed the suggestion is so strong that 
were we to take a handful of Zostera in the flowering state 
and throw it down to be afterwards covered up by mud 
and hardened, it would present precisely the aspect of the 
fossil in question. It is hardly to be supposed that flowering 
plants flourished at the remote period to which this fossil 
1 Testimony of the Rocks, 446. 
