﻿330 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



[Mar. 20, 



the present plant are sufficiently striking, I think it best to distin- 

 guish it, provisionally, as a species. It may be characterized as 

 follows : — 



Glossopteris muscefolia. 



Frond broadly oblong, rounded and very obtuse at the apex ; side- 

 veins very slender, very much crowded, dichotomous, nearly perpen- 

 dicular to the midrib and the margin, near the base only oblique 

 and anastomosing. 



Glossopteris frondosa, McClelland*, has some resemblance to this, 

 especially in general form ; but neither the figure nor the descrip- 

 tion enables me to identify the two. If they be the same, the most 

 important characters of the venation are overlooked by that author. 



3. Glossopteris leptonetjra, n. sp. ? PI. IX. figs. 1—4. 

 Numerous specimens in sandstone from Kampti; the fronds 

 generally in great numbers on the surface of each slab of sandstone, 

 lying confusedly together, so that hardly any frond is visible in 

 its whole length : it appears that the plant must have grown in 

 great abundance in particular spots. I at first took this species for 

 the Glossopteris angusUfolia, Ad. Br., which it resembles in outline ; 

 but, judging from the figure and description of that species f, the 

 venation is essentially different. In G. angmtifolia, the veins ap- 

 pear to be coarse and rather distant, and sparingly anastomosing 

 near the midrib only ; in our Kampti plant they are very fine and 

 close, and anastomose repeatedly throughout their length, even near 

 to the margin, forming almost as regular a network as in Sageno- 

 pteris Phillipsii. Our plant agrees more nearly (indeed very nearly) 

 with G. linearis, McCoy; but the veins are much more oblique 

 than they are described in that species, and quite as much so as in 

 G. angmtifolia. 



The frond of this Glossopteris is, like that of G. linearis, very 

 narrow in proportion to its length, with nearly parallel margins; 

 some of the most nearly complete specimens are 4| to 6 inches 

 long, with a breadth of only half an inch ; the apex acute, but less 

 remarkably so than in the Nagpur form of G. Browniana ; the base 

 tapering very gradually into the footstalk. 



One very small frond, from Kampti, apparently a young plant of 

 this species, has preserved the whole of its leafstalk or stipes, which 

 I have not seen in other instances ; this stipes is much shorter than 

 the frond, narrow, and rather suddenly dilated at the base. 



Intermixed with the narrow linear fronds which I have described, 

 I find others, in much smaller numbers, of a broader form, lingidate 

 or somewhat lanceolate, but with precisely the same venation as the 

 narrow ones. They have the form of G. Browniana Indica, but are 

 still, I think, clearly distinguishable by their finer veins and the 

 more uniform reticulation of these veins, — the venation, in fact, being 

 that of Sagenopteris. These broader fronds appear to me to belong 

 to the same species with the narrow linear ones : it may be doubted 



* Keport of Geol. Survey of India, p. 55, pi. 15. f. 3. 

 t Ad. Brongn. Hist. Veg. Foss. 224, pi. 63. f. 1. 



