﻿192 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Mar. 12, 



pears to be pretty regularly pinnated with alternate branches. M. 

 Brongniart * formerly pointed out another distinction : that, in the 

 Conifer ce, the leaves at the end of each annual shoot are much crowded 

 together, while the base of the shoot is nearly bare of leaves, or has 

 them much smaller than the rest ; so as to produce an appearance of 

 interruption or contraction in the branches, corresponding to the 

 annual interruption and renewal of growth. But this very same ap- 

 pearance is observable in the Lycopodium annotinum, which indeed 

 derives its name therefrom, and is often very conspicuous (though 

 not constant) in L. clavatum. 



I conclude, then, that neither the stem nor the leaves afford any 

 outward characters whereby we may with certainty distinguish these 

 two natural families, which, although they belong to different natural 

 classes, have yet so remarkable an outward similarity, that the one 

 may be fairly said to represent the other. Hence, although I have 

 scarcely any doubt that the so-called Lycopodites Williamsoni is 

 rightly placed in the Coniferous order, yet we can hardly be quite 

 certain of it without knowing something of the internal structure of 

 its fruit. The cones are not, indeed, of very rare occurrence, but are 

 always, as far as T have seen, so much compressed and crushed, that 

 the important points of their structure cannot be ascertained. I may 

 observe, however, that the small and apparently immature cones 

 which are seen attached to the ends of the branches, in several spe- 

 cimens of this plant, have much more resemblance to the young 

 female cones of a Pine or Fir, than to anything in the Club-mosses. 

 I have not seen them in a sufficiently perfect state to allow of an ac- 

 curate comparison with the full-grown cones, but their scales do not 

 appear to be drawn out into long points like those of the latter ; 

 whereas, in a Lycopodium, the youngest cones or spikes of fructi- 

 fication differ in nothing but size from the oldest. It is possible, in- 

 deed, that these bodies may be catkins of male flowers ; in which 

 case they would be decisive of the question; but I must own that 

 they have more the look of the young female cones of a Pine, as they 

 appear in the flowering season. Usually they are solitary ; but a 

 remarkable specimen, shown me by Prof. Phillips, has four of them 

 closely clustered together at the end of a branch. 



This plant has a striking resemblance, in its ramification and the 

 characters of its foliage, to the Voltzice of the New Red Sandstone ; 

 but that remarkable genus is characterized by the peculiar form and 

 arrangement of the scales of its cone, which are dilated upwards from 

 a narrow base or claw, divided into three or five lobes, and very loosely 

 imbricated. The genus Palissya, to which Brongniart (though doubt- 

 fully) refers our plant, was founded by Endlicher on a fossil (the Cun- 

 ninghamites sphenolepis of Braun) from the Lias of Bayreuth. I 

 must acknowledge that, judging from Endlicher' s description, the re- 

 semblance between this Bayreuth plant and ours is not very evident. 

 WalcTiia differs in the closely and regularly pectinated or feather-like 

 arrangement of its branches, resembling the Norfolk Island Pine. On 



* Prodrome, p. 81. 



