514 PTERIDOSPERMS, ETC. [CH. 



with the Talchir-Karharb^ri beds of India ; similarly, in South 

 Africa and South America the Gangamopteris beds are homo- 

 taxial with those of India and Australia. The leaf described 

 by Carruthers^ from Brazil as Noeggerathia obovata (the type- 

 specimen is in the British Museum) is no doubt specifically 

 identical vfithGangamopteris cyclopteroides Feist. ^ In a paper 

 by Mr Hayden on Gangamopteris beds in the Vihi Valley, 

 Kashmir, evidence is adduced in support of the conclusion that 

 the rocks are " not younger than Upper Carboniferous and may 

 belong to the base of that subdivision or even to the Middle 

 Carboniferous^." It would seem that Gangamopteris was a 

 very widely spread genus during the latter part of the Carbon- 

 iferous period in the vast Southern Continent to which the 

 name Gondwana Land is often applied, and that it flourished in 

 the Southern Flora during at least part of the Permian period : 

 with other members of the Glossopteris Flora it migrated to the 

 North where it has been preserved in Permian rocks of Northern 

 Russia. The Glossopteris Flora must have had its birth in the 

 Southern hemisphere. The conclusion seems inevitable that 

 the leaves of Glossopteris and Gangamopteris in the shales and 

 sandstones of India, South Africa, South America, and Australia 

 are relics of the vegetation of a continent of which these regions 

 are the disjuncta membra. Darwin wrote to his friend Hooker 

 in 1881, "I have sometimes speculated whether there did not 

 exist somewhere during long ages an extremely isolated conti- 

 nent, perhaps near the South Pole*." It is probable that 

 Gangamopteris is one of the genera which flourished on this 

 continent. 



Gangamopteris cyclopteroides, Feistmantel^. Fig. 345. 



1876. Feistmantel, Eeoords Geol. Surv. India, Vol. ix. Pt iii. p. 73. 



The specimen represented in fig. 345 illustrates the characters 

 of this commonest representative of the genus. 



1 Carruthers (692) p. 9, PI. vi. fig. 1. 2 Seward (03) p. 83. 



3 Hayden (07) ; Seward (07'). 



* Darwin (87) A. Vol. in. p. 248. 



* For synonymy, see Arber (05) p. 104. 



