122 NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 



milar to those of an Orcliideous Epiphyte, adhering to a fragment 

 of coniferous wood, — the whole converted into silex. 



8. The Lillia viticulosa of Unger, a fossil stem of peculiar struc- 

 ture, from the tertiary formation of Ranka in Hungary, is carefully 

 described, and shown to bear more analogy to the stem o^ Zygophyl- 

 lum coccineum than to any other that has been examined. 



9. In proceeding to treat of Ferns, our author begins with a most 

 elaborate examination of the internal structure of the stem in the 

 recent kinds, showing, by a series of minute comparative analyses, 

 how uniform in all essential points is the organization of the stem 

 throughout the tribe of Polypodiaceae, from the humble herbaceous 

 Ferns of Europe to the loftiest arborescent kinds. He then proceeds 

 to a similar comparative examination of those fossil Fern-stems 

 which he includes under the name of Protopterides, and demon- 

 strates their close agreement, both in external and internal structure, 

 with the recent tree-ferns belonging to the groups of Cyatheoe and 

 Dicksonioe. This agreement is particularly striking in the case of 

 an arborescent Fern* from Van Diemen's Land, which M. Corda 

 conjectures to be Balantium antarcticum {JDicksonia antarctica^ 

 Hooker), and which exhibits several differences in the arrangement 

 of its internal ligneous and vascular system from all those noticed 

 by Brongniart, approximating still more closely to the fossil Pro- 

 topterides, In particular, it agrees with these latter in the circum- 

 stance, that the layer of hard, dark-coloured, compact, fibrous tissue, 

 which encloses the pith and constitutes the real wood, is continuous^ 

 presenting in the transverse section the appearance of a sinuous 

 but uninterrupted zone, whereas in all the Fern-stems figured by 

 Adolphe Brongniart t it is divided into distinct plates. The peculiar 

 character which distinguishes Protopteris from all arborescent Ferns 

 hitherto known in a recent state, is the shape of the vascular scar 

 left by the breaking of the vessels that passed into the leaf-stalk : 

 this scar, in Protopteris, forms a continuous line, in the shape of a 

 horse-shoe or a trefoil, whereas in the recent kinds it is always in- 

 terrupted or broken into several portions, and generally there are 

 several concentric groups of such vascular marks on the surface of 

 each leaf-scar. 



The Protopterideae are divided by Corda into eight genera, as 

 follows : — 



I. Protopteris. Four species : — 1 . P. Sternbergii (JLepidodendron 

 punctatunty St., Sigillaria punctata, Brongn.), from Kaunitz, Bohe- 

 mia; 2. P, Singeri {Caulopteris, Goepp.), from Kaunitz, and from 

 Giersdorf in Silesia; 3. P. Cottai (^Caulopteris punctata, Goepp.), 

 found in alluvial soil at Grossenhaim, Saxony ; 4. P. microrhiza, of 

 which the locality is unknown. 



All the species of Protopteris appear to be of very rare and strictly 

 local occurrence in a fossil state ; two of the four indeed are known 

 only by unique specimens. The first three are extremely similar in 

 their external characters. The internal structure of P. Sternbergii 



* Corda, tab. 51. figs. 1-9. f Hist, des Veg. Foss. t. 44. 



