﻿1861.] 



BTTNBURY FOSSIL PLANTS, NAGPTTR. 



339 



The branches are very irregularly alternate ; very often, but not 

 constantly, they are opposite to one of the supposed partitions ; they 

 are of small diameter in comparison with the body from which they 

 proceed, but various and irregular in thickness, and not less various 

 in direction ; in many of them we can trace an axis, like that of the 

 main body on a small scale. Many of them are again subdivided, 

 and with a like irregularity. 



Now, this striking irregularity of ramification appears to me to 

 be very much at variance with the characters of the genus Spheno- 

 phyllum and the family of Calamitece (or Asterophyllitece) to which 

 Vertebraria is referred by De Zigno and others. In Splienopliyllum, 

 Aster ophyUites, Annidaria, and in those Calamites or Calamodendra 

 which branch, the branches invariably spring from the articulations 

 of the main stem, with which they are themselves articulated at 

 their base ; and their arrangement is really symmetrical, though the 

 symmetry is sometimes disguised by abortion. In this fossil, on the 

 contrary, the branches are continuous with the main trunk, not 

 articulated, and are in every way irregular and unsymmetrical. I 

 conclude, therefore, that the so-called Vertebraria from Kampti is 

 not a Sphenopliyllum, nor one of the Aster opJiyllitea?. On the other 

 hand, all the characters of the ramification appear to me to favour 

 the conjecture that these supposed Vertebraria 1 . are roots of some 

 large plant. 



The true original Vertebraria^, according to McCoy, owe their 

 singular form to densely compacted whorls of leaves surrounding 

 without interruption a slender stem. That the supposed Vertebraria, 

 of Kampti are not of this nature is rendered evident, not only by 

 their ramification but also by the character of the cellular structure 

 observable on the surface of one specimen, which I have already 

 described. 



In the unbranched specimens from the Nagpur district, the indi- 

 cations of their nature are not so clear ; and their appearance might 

 easily lead to their being classed with the true Vertebrariai. They 

 seem to me, however, to be in reality of the same nature with the 

 branched specimens from Kampti. Nor can I at all understand how 

 distinct (though crowded) whorls of leaves could, in the fossilizing 

 process, have remained so closely and uniformly pressed together as 

 to present the appearance of a continuous columnar body through 

 the whole length of the specimens. In no part of the best of these 

 pieces can I detect any appearance at all like leaves. 



On the whole, then, I am of opinion that the branched specimens 

 from Kampti, which have been taken for Vertebraria?. , were the 

 roots of some plant, possibly of Phyllotheca ; that they had probably 

 a woody central axis of small diameter ; that between this axis and 

 the outer coat or rind (which probably consisted of loose cellular 

 tissue) there was a hollow, traversed at irregular distances by in- 

 complete partitions, which connected the outer coat with the axis. 

 The unbranched specimens were most likely also fragments of roots, 

 though this is not quite so clear. The original Vertebraria?, V. In- 

 dica and V. australis (SplieyiophyTlum radiatum and S. austraU, 



