﻿Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xlix. (1905), No. VZ. 



THE WILDE LECTURE. 



XII. The Early History of Seed-bearing Plants, as 

 recorded in the Carboniferous Flora. 



By D. H. Scott, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S, 



Hon. Me?nb. Lit. &* Phil. Soc, Manchester. 

 Honorary Keeper of the Jodtell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens, Hew. 



Delivered February 28th, igoj. 



It has long been remarked that among the fern-like 

 fronds which form so important and striking a con- 

 stituent of the Carboniferous Flora as it has come down 

 to us, a large proportion has never been found with any 

 satisfactory indications of a Filicinean fructification. In 

 fact a majority of the genera and species of fern-fronds 

 (as we may shortly call them) are in this position, and 

 Pecopteris is the only considerable genus which has so far 

 consistently afforded evidence of fructification definitely 

 referable to ferns.* A certain part of Sphenopteris is also 

 known to have borne reproductive organs of the same 

 general type, but this only applies to a fraction of the 

 extensive genus. 



In some cases, as in Rhacopteris and the Devonian 

 Palceopteris, fructifications have been discovered which 

 may be those of true ferns, but the real nature of which is 

 still open to doubt. In many entire genera, as Neur- 

 opteris, Alethopteris, Lonchopteris, Callipteris, and others, 

 including numbers of the commonest carboniferous 

 species, no clear case of a fern-fructification has ever been 

 observed ; in most, the reproductive organs were wholly 



* Even this statement now requires limitation. See below, p 15, 

 footnote. 



May Ijt/i, 1905. 



