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PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [April 28, 



belong to Gutbier. Mr. J. Smith*, whose valuable researches and 

 works on the recent ferns are well known, has substituted the name 

 Dictymia for the living ferns assigned to Dictyopteris by Presl. 



WOODWAEDITES ? RoBEETSI, Sp. UOV. 



The specimen figured (figs. 1, 2) is unfortunately only a portion of 

 a frond, so that the character of the fern cannot be fally described. It 

 probably represents the terminal part of a pinna, and consists of five 

 more or less alternately opposed pinnules, which are ovate and ob- 

 tusely pointed, with entire margins, and broadly adherent at their 

 base : there is no midrib ; the venation is anastomosing ; the areolae 

 are large and irregularly hexagonal, some elongate and parallel in 

 the middle of the pinnules, afterwards oblique and then free near 

 the margins ; there are no free veins within the areolae : in this latter 

 character it is similar to the genera above mentioned ; and this 

 feature is also foimd in some recent ferns, as in Litohrochia (L. 'pe- 

 data) and other genera. 



Figs. 1 & 2, — Woodwardites ? Robertsi, from the Coal-measures 

 near Beiudley, Gloueester shire. 



Fig. 1. — Portion of 

 the Frond. 



Fig. 2. — Leaflet, magnified. 



In the reticulate venation and the absence of a distinct midrib, 

 this fern is allied to Dictyopteris ; but in the general habit, mode of 

 venation, and broad decurrent base of the pinnules, it more closely 

 resembles those ferns referred by Goeppert to his genus Wood- 

 wardites (near to Lonchopteris, Brongn.), and, with the exception of 



* Enum. Filic. Hort. Kew. 1846. See also his useful Catalogue of Cultivated 

 Ferns, with generic descriptions : London, 1857. 



