Maw — 071 a Fossil Flower, 75 



but four instead of five lobes. It resembles somewhat in outline 

 the recent Parana voluhilis, and, as the absence of the fifth lobe 

 might be merely an abnormal condition of the individual example, 

 it seemed, at first, scarcely sufficient to separate it from the genus 

 with which all the other similar forms from the Tertiary beds had 

 heretofore been identified. 



Mr. Kichard Kippist, of the Linnasan Society, has, however, within 

 the last few days pointed out to me the much closer resemblance of 

 the fossil to Kydia calcycina, an East Indian plant of the natural 

 order Byttneriacece, and has furnished me with the recent examples 

 of the enlarged involucre, represented in Figures 2 and 3 for com- 

 parison with the fossil. A figure of the plant is also given in 

 Wight's Icones plantarum Indm Orientalis (vol. iii. table 880, fig. 5). 

 Mr. Kippist remarks that " the fossil agrees far better with Kydia 

 than Parana in the number and blunt obovate form of the sepals, 

 as well as in the numerous nearly parallel veins, the pointed sepals 

 of Parana being penniveined with an intermarginal nerve ; in fact, 

 that Wight's figure of the enlarged calyx of Kydia calycina is so 

 completely identical with the fossil that the one might almost have 

 been drawn from the other." In the fossil the inner or true calyx 

 with the enclosed capsule appears to have become detached from the 

 involucre (the part supposed to be represented in the fossil), though 

 the broad scar in the centre shows clearly the point of attachment. 

 A large proportion of the examples of Kydia have only four lobes 

 to the outer calyx or involucre, but are occasionally found with five, 

 as in Figure 2, or even with six lobes. The Hampshire and also the 

 Swiss specimens figured by Heer vary in this way ; and, although 

 the great majority have five lobes, it seems questionable whether the 

 whole are not more properly referable to Kydia than Parana} Three 

 examples of leaves in my possession from the Corfe leaf-bed, a con- 

 tinuation of that exposed in Studland Bay, agree well with the form 

 and venation of the leaves of Kydia calycina. 



1 submit these few particulars in the belief that the evidence in 

 favour of the affinity of the Tertiary flower-like forms with Kydia 

 is equal if not superior to the claims of Parana to include them, 

 though the identification of fossil with recent Phanerogamous genera 

 must always be uncertain and difficult. Fig. 4: represents the calyx 

 of Calycopieris (Getonia) floribunda, for which I am indebted to 

 Mr. Carruthers, and which is also more like the fossil than any of 

 the recent species of Porana. 



itTOTiCiES OIF ^yc:E:M:oII^S- 



Classification of Meteorites. By M. Daubree.^ 



THE bodies which are comprised under the general name of 

 meteorites have long since been arranged under two great 

 divisions, the irans and the sianes ; it is, indeed, the division which 



^ See figures of Porana, op. cit., p. 516, 



2 Classification adoptee pour la collection de meteorites du Museum. Par M. 

 Daubree; Comptes rendus des Seances de 1' Academie des Sciences, tome 65, July, 1867. 



