1910] JEFFREY—PTEROPSIDA 413 
_ an apparently wider and truer significance than the English term 
_ solenostelic, holds the claim of priority. 
NOTE ON THE Lycopsipa.—In the second edition of his admirable 
Studies in fossil botany, Dr. Scorr adopts without question the 
present writer’s phylum Pteropsida. He also adopts the designa- 
tion Lycopsida, but confines its application to the Lycopodiales, 
living and extinct. For the remaining groups included in the 
present writer’s Lycopsida, he proposes the name Sphenopsida, 
since he regards the Equisetales, Psilotales, and Sphenophyllales 
as not properly microphyllous, or to be included in the same 
phylum as the Lycopodiales. This view does not appear to be 
well founded, since the Equisetales and Psilotales are on anatomi- 
cal grounds clearly and unquestionably microphyllous and like- 
wise ventrisporangiate. There is no anatomical evidence as to the 
microphyllous character of the Sphenophyllales, since their central 
cylinder is protostelic. They resemble the two series mentioned, 
however, in being ventrisporangiate. The writer is of the opinion 
that the forking and arrangement of the fibrovascular strands in 
the blade of the leaf affords an unreliable criterion as to affinities, 
since if we considered the forking leaf trace rather than the rela- 
tion of the foliar strands to the stele of the stem, it would be neces- 
sary to include certain Sigilliarieae with the Lycopsida in the sense 
of Dr. Scorr and others with his Sphenopsida. A forking leaf 
trace and even a large leaf blade may occur in the lycopsid 
Series, but neither of these is a palingenetic feature, as is clearly 
shown by the relation of the leaf trace to the central cylinder of 
the stem. There appears, in view of the considerations just 
described, no reason of sufficient weight for excluding the Equise- 
tales, Psilotales, and Sphenophyllales from the phylum Lycopsida, 
since they possess all the essential characters of this great group. 
At best these three series can be aggregated only as a subgroup 
under the main heading Lycopsida. 
TE.—It is a fact, apparently not without significance, that the various 
recent English writers, who are impelled to disagree with the present author's 
views as to the absence of foliar gaps in the Equisetales, have not made any 
reply to the seemingly unanswerable arguments in favor of these views, but 
have contented themselves with the mere reiteration of a dissentient opinion. 
