XIV] PLEUROMEIA 69 



one of the earlier accounts of the species, states that Corda 

 dissented from Miinster's choice of the name Sigillaria and 

 proposed the new generic title Pleuromeia. One of the best 

 descriptions of the genus we owe to Solms-Laubach^ whose 

 paper contains references to earlier writers. Illustrations have 

 been published by Munster, Germar^, Bischof^, Solms-Laubach 

 and Potonie*. 



Pleuromeia Sternbergi. (Munster.) 

 Fig. 134. 



1842. Sigillaria Sternhergii, Munster. 



1854. Sagenaria Bischojii, Goeppert^ 



1885. Sigillaria oculina, Blanckenliorn. 



1904. Pleuromeia oculina, Potonie. 



Pleuromeia Sternbergi is represented by casts of vegetative 

 and fertile axes, but the preservation of the latter is not 

 sufficiently good to enable us to draw any very definite 

 conclusions as to the nature of the reproductive organs. Casts 

 of the stems reach a length of about 1 metre and a diameter of 

 5 — 6 cm., or in some cases 10 cm.; all of them are in a more 

 or less decorticated state, the degree of decortication being 

 responsible for differences in the external features which led 

 Spieker® to adopt more than one specific name. 



Fig. 134, A, represents a sketch, made some years ago, of a 

 specimen in the Breslau Museum which contains several examples 

 of this species, among others those described by Germar in 

 1852. The cylindrical cast (38 cm. long by 12 cm. in circum- 

 ference), which has been slightly squeezed towards the upper 

 end, bears spirally arranged imperfectly preserved leaf-scars and 

 the lower end shows the truncated base of one of the short 

 Stigmaria-like arms characteristic of the plant. As shown 

 clearly in a specimen originally figured by Bischof and more 

 recently by Potonie^, the stem-base is divided by a double 

 dichotomy into four short and broad lobes with blunt apices and 

 bent upwards like the arms of a grappling iron (fig. 134, D). 



1 Solms-Laubach (99). ^ Germar (52). ' Bischof (53). 



* Potoni^ (01) p. 754; (04) Lief ii. ' Goeppert, in Bomer (54) PI. xv. fig. 7. 



6 Spieker (53). ' Potonie (loc. cit.). 



