Maryland Geological Survey 285 



aequales, • in maculas irregulariter hexagonoideas elongatas confluentes. 

 Costse crassEe usque ad apicem pinnularum excurrentes." 



Schimper redescribed the genus in 1869/ adding the following epider- 

 mal characters : " Epidermide superiore insequaliter rectangula, inferiore 

 polygono-areolata stomatibusque pertusa." He concluded from the latter 

 fact that Sagenopteris was Avithout representatives in the modern flora, 

 and that it could not be related to the modern Marsilea, which it re- 

 sembled, and which was thought to lack stomata on the lower surface of 

 the pinnae. ISTathorst, one of the strongest supporters of this latter rela- 

 tionship, points out that stomata do occur in this position in Marsilea, 

 and that the abundant fruits which occur in the Eha?tic beds near Pals jo, 

 associated with Sagenopteris undulata JSTathorst, and which cannot be 

 referred to the conifers or cycads, are, in the absence of angiosperms, 

 the sporocarps of Sagenopteris, a conclusion independently arrived 

 at by Heer. Similar sporocarps, if they are sporocarps, are described 

 by Zigno from the Oolite of Italy. Although Solms-Laubach is 

 inclined to doubt the validity of JSTathorst's argument, and Seward 

 recently ^ reiterates his belief that Sagenopteris is a true fern and not a 

 Ehizocarp, most authors ^ place the genus among the Hydropteracese, 

 a Aaew to which Schimper subscribes in Zittel^s Handbuch. Attention 

 should be called in this connection to a specimen figured by Fontaine 

 from near Potomac Pun, Virginia, purporting to show the remains of 

 fructification characters in the form of a series of dots which, according 

 to this author, would place the specimen " in the Dictyopteris group of 

 Polypodium." The characters indicated are not visible on this particular 

 specimen at the present time and no importance is attached to them by 

 the writer/ 



1 Schimper, Pal. Veget., tome i, 1869, p. 640. 



^ Jurassic Fl., pt. ii, 1904, p. 93. Since this was written vol. ii of Seward's 

 Fossil Plants has been received. In this work the probable relationship 

 between Sagenopteris and Marsilea is admitted. 



^Nathorst, Heer, Schimper, Schenk, Saporta, Potonie, Zeiller, etc. 



* Salfeld, in a recent discussion of the Jurassic plants of northern Germany 

 (Palaeont., Band Ivi, 1909, p. 17), states that he found fructifications on the 

 pinnules of Sagenopteris Nilsoniana Brongniart, but he brings forward no 

 evidence to support his statement. 



