GENERAL MORPHOLOGY 301 
But the Fossil Ligulates were not all large. There is evidence that 
small organisms, corresponding in habit to the heterophyllous Se/aginellas, 
existed also in early geological times. The fossil from the Upper Coal 
Measures, described as Lycopodites Gutbier’, Gopp, can hardly have been 
anything else. Lycopodites primaevus, Schr., from the Westphalian Middle 
Coal Measures, though it shows no distinctly Selaginelloid shoot, has 
heterosporous sporangia, with megaspores more numerous than four in 
each sporangium, as shown me by Mr. Kidston, in specimens belonging to 
the Brussels Museum. A similar condition has been described by Zeiller ? 
Akt 
Fic. 149. 
Plant of Selaginella spinulosa, with root-system springing from swollen knot at base of 
the upright hypocotyl. Natural size. 
in a plant from Blanzy, named by him Lycopodites Suissei, where the 
number of megaspores was found to be 16 to 24. In these cases the 
reduction in number of the spores as a consequence of heterospory 
appears to have proceeded less far than in the modern Se/aginella. 
But, on the other hand, the carboniferous plant described by Bertrand 
as Miadesmia corresponds in structure, as well as in the heterophyllous 
arrangement of the leaves and in the presence of a ligule, to Se/agznedia, 
while it appears to have progressed towards a seed-like fructification. 
The minute new species Miadesmia membranacea, Bertrand, has been 
directly compared with Selaginella spinulosa (=S. selaginoides, Link) by 
Miss Benson,? in respect of characters other than the seed-like structure 
1 Comptes Rendus, April, 17, 1900. 2 Proc. Roy. Soc., Series B, vol. xxix, p. 473 
