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APHYLLUM CRISTATUM. 

 CRESTED APHYLLUM. 



Generic Character. 

 ■ Stem arborescent, covered with fleshy scales, inserted in hollows furnished with 

 glands. 



Specific Character. 



APHYLLUM cristatum. Scales obovate, with an oblong crest in their centre ; 

 interstices forming angular furrows. 



Synonyms. 

 This fossil plant has not yet been described, or figured. 



Description and Locality. 



Stem cylindrical, covered with leaf-like scales, the interstices forming furrows whose 

 sides meet in an angle at bottom. 



Scales leaf-like, ovate, thick, pressed close to the stem, crested in the middle ; 

 crest oblong, narrow. 



Found in a sandstone quarry at Banktop, in Yorkshire. 



Observations. 



The specimen figured is part of a stem broke up by the quarry-men in getting 

 stone for the inclosure of Barnsley Common ; the whole of the remainder was broke 

 up by them, and so entirely destroyed that no other part of it could be recovered. 



According to their account, the stem must have been nearly forty feet in length, 

 and near two feet thick, placed obliquely in the rock, appearing on the face of it 

 from the top to the bottom, and must have weighed nearly three tons. 



Count Sternberg has figured, in his Essai, No. 3, pi. 28, a somewhat similar 

 fossil plant, under the name of lepidodendron appcndiculatum, the scales of which 

 are rather smaller, and have an appendage which fills up the furrows of the inter- 

 stices. His specimen was from the cabinet of the Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt, 

 but it does not appear that the place where it had been found was known. 



