ANEIMITEAE 465 



phyta of later periods appears well established, but we 

 cannot for a moment suppose that the former were the 

 direct ancestors of the latter. The question will receive 

 some further consideration in the final chapter. 



Aneimiteae 



The genus Aneimites} Dawson, may be mentioned 

 in connection with the Neuropterideae, to which it has 

 sometimes been referred on foliar characters, though, as 

 we shall see, the fructification shows that there can have 

 been no near affinity. The habit of the fronds is like 

 that of a Maiden-hair Fern (Adiantum), as the original 

 generic name Adiantites implied ; the genus extends 

 from the Devonian to the Middle Coal-measures, and is 

 characteristic of the Lower Carboniferous. In a species 

 (Aneimites' 1 fertilis) from the Pottsville beds of West 

 Virginia, of an age corresponding to that of our 

 Millstone Grit, Dr. David White has demonstrated 

 the presence of seeds on the fronds. They are borne 

 on the apices of branched, terminal extensions of the 

 peripheral pinnae ; the pinnules on the adjacent sterile 

 portions of the frond, though considerably reduced, 

 retain the characteristic cuneiform shape. The small 

 seeds (averaging 4.5 mm. in length) are rhomboidal in 

 form, lenticular in cross -section, and winged ; it thus 

 appears that they were of the platyspermic (bilaterally 

 symmetrical) type, which was once supposed to charac- 

 terise the Cordaiteae. As the specimens are only 



1 David White, "The Seeds of Aneimites," Smithsonian Miscellaneous 

 Collection, vol. xxvii. p. 322, 1904. 



a It is to be regretted that the older and more familiar name, Adiantites, 

 Goppert, has had to be abandoned, on grounds which will only appeal to 

 the specialist in nomenclature. 



