— 4214 — 
Ordinarely the leaves seem to have been erect and very nearly 
contiguous for the greater part of their length. 
The fragment here shown, from near Minas, is evidently equi- 
setaceous, and but for its antiquity might with propriety be refe- 
red to Equisetum. In the western hemisphere equisetaceous stems 
are not unknown, even at a low horizon in the Upper Carbonife- 
rous, exemples of stems with very well developed sheaths and long 
slender teeth being found in the Lookout (Lower Pottsville) forma- 
tion, of Millstone Grit age, in the southern end of the Appalachian 
trough, (1) 
Locality: Estrada Nova, near Minas, Santa Catherina. About 40 
meters below the Barro Branco coal, or 135 meters above the gra- 
nite, and 145 meters below the horizon of the Iraty black shale. 
Lot 3923. 
Phyllotheca 
Brongiart, Prodrome, 1828, p. 154 
The name Phyllotheca is applied to a ramose Equisetaceous 
type characterized in particulary by having its linear-lanceolate 
leaves coherent for some distance at the base in a short sheath, 
which is generally spread out or funnel-shaped, instead of erect or 
appressed. 
The tooth or free portion of the leaf has but a single nerve and 
is usually long and recurved, though the tip is often somewhat 
incurved. The sporangia are borne on peltate sporangiophores verticil- 
latelly arranged between whorls of bracts on terminal portions of 
the main or lateral axes. 
The genus is recorded as ranging from the lower part (West- 
phalian) of the Upper Carboniferous to the Jurassic, though there is 
room for some doubt as to the complete generic identity of the species 
from the Carboniferous with those from the Oolite. 
The Palaéozoic types have rather large stems of Calamarian 
aspect, the pith casts of which are indistinguishable from those of 
some of the Calamites that have but a partial alternation of the ribs 
at the joints. 
Paes Luo 
(1) See Lesquereux, Coal Flora, vol. Ill, 1884, p. 729, pl. XC, fig. 5. 
