AND FOLIAGE OF CALAMODENDRON COMMUNE. 221 



oi Neuropteris. These three different parts of the plant 

 have been a little disturbed by pressure ; but any one who 

 saw them in situ could scarcely have a doubt of their all 

 three having been connected together and formed one 

 plant before the pressure was applied. The stratum in 

 which they occur is nearly one entire mass of cones and 

 leaves with a few fruit-stalks. Within the space of about 

 a square foot as many as one hundred cones have been 

 met with. These organs of fructification are nearly always 

 of a yellowish brown colour^ and have very much the 

 appearance of crude paraffine, similar to what is found 

 in the upper sporangia of Triplosporites {Lepidostrobus ?) 

 Brownii, and now generally considered to be microspores. 

 This hydrocarbon ^j or one nearly allied to it^ probably 

 served to protect the organs of fructification by a waxy 

 coating from too much moisture of the habitat of the 

 aquatic plant, and has also since preserved it for our ex- 

 amination by its indestructible nature. Of all the parts 

 of fossil plants none have been so well preserved as the 

 organs of fructification. 



The number of receptacles or cells containing sporangia 

 in the first specimens I met with, as previously stated, 

 varied from eight to nine in number ; but in those described 

 in this communication they run from fourteen to eighteen, 

 thus showing that the Ewood-Bridge specimens have a 

 greater resemblance to Ludwig and Goeppert^s specimens 

 than had been at first supposed. 



In my monograph it was mentioned that the small 

 cones found with the Calamodendron commune were the 

 fructification of that plant, so far as the evidence of iden- 

 tity of structure in the stems of the two could prove it. 



* Professor John Morris, F.G-.S., I believe, was the first author to notice 

 the nature of this substance, in the capsules of his Coalbrook-Dale fossil, de- 

 scribed by him in vol. v, part 3 (new series) of the ' Transactions of the Greo- 

 logical Society of London.' 



