22 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



each composite member or " stipe " of such a colonial stock grows 

 from a separate sicula and therefore corresponds to the whole 

 colony or rhabdosome of the earlier graptolites, the Axonolipa. It 

 was to be surmised that also the other genera of the Axonophora 

 form like synrhabdosomes. We are now able to prove this for the 

 important genus Climacograptus, Mr Edwin Stein of the New York 

 State Museum having found a synrhabdosome of the common 

 graptolite C . parvus of the Normanskill shale at the well- 

 known type locality of that formation, Kenwood on the Normans- 

 kill. About forty rhabdosomes of very different age and size radiate 

 from the center of a small disk that is obscured by the confused 

 mass of thin stems of the rhabdosomes. The diameter of the 

 colonial stock is 45 to 50 mm. 



Note on Paropsonema cryptophya Clarke, and 

 Discophyllum peltatum Hall 



Plate 1, figure 8; plate 2 



In Bulletin 39 of the New York State Museum, page 172 (1900), 

 Doctor Clarke very fully described a fossil from the Portage beds 

 at Naples which is by all means at -once the most striking and the 

 most puzzling of all the peculiar forms that the Portage beds of 

 western New York have afforded. After Mr Luther succeeded in 

 collecting a small series of these large disklike bodies, specimens 

 and drawings were sent to a number of prominent zoologists and 

 paleontologists for suggestions, without, however, bringing forth 

 more than rather vague views that they were not distinctly referable 

 to any recent class of organisms, Prof. E. Haeckel being perhaps 

 the most decided in comparing them to the Medusae. The present 

 writer, though much interested in these striking fossils, was like- 

 wise unable to find any clue to their true nature. Doctor Clarke 

 finally inclined to the view that they might be extremely aberrant 

 echinoids, although Doctor Jackson and others declined definitely 

 to corroborate this view. So the species was referred to the 

 echinoids although it was stated that " the characters of this singular 

 fossil are so unusual and so different from structures presented by 

 the fossil and recent Echinodermata that it would be venturesome 

 to make further suggestions as to the probable affinities of the 

 organism." 



The material available at the time showed the organism to have 

 consisted of a flat, elliptic disk, one side of which exhibits three con- 

 centric cycles of radial bands looking like knotted cords, separated 



