3836 Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh. 



obovate leaves. These scales are ranged in elegant curves, which one of the members 

 of the Royal Physical Society, Mr. Charles Peach, as his quick eye caught the ar- 

 rangement in Mr. M.'s specimen, compared not inaptly to those ornamental curves — a 

 a feat of the turning-lathe — which one sees roughening the backs of ladies' watches. 

 Mr. Miller's specimen exhibited, as it lay in the rock, what, so far as he knew, no 

 other specimen of telodendron had yet shown, — a true branch shooting out at an acute 

 angle from the stem, and fretted with scales of a peculiar form, verging from irregu- 

 larly rhomboidal to irregularly polygonal. It has been shown by Messrs. Lindley and 

 Hutton, on the evidence of one of their specimens, figured in the 'Fossil Flora,' that 

 the line of circular or oval scars, so remarkable in this genus, and which are held to 

 be the impressions made by a rectilinear range of cones, an almost sessile row ex- 

 isted in duplicate, occurring on two of the sides of the plant directly opposite. Its 

 cones were thus ranged all in one plane. The branch struck off from one of the inter- 

 medial sides, at what in the transverse section would be at right angles with the cones; 

 and though little can be founded on a single specimen, such, certainly, is the disposi- 

 tion of branch that seems best to consort with such a disposition of cone. It may be 

 added, said Mr. M., that if all the branches were also ranged in one plane like the 

 cones, such a disposition would not be quite without example in the vegetable king- 

 dom, even as it now exists. " Our host," says the late Captain Basil Hall, in his brief 

 description of the island of Java, " carried us to see a singular tree, called familiarly 

 the 'traveller's friend,' — Urania being, I believe, its botanic name. We found it to 

 differ from most other trees, in having all its branches in one plane, like the sticks of 

 a fan or the feathers of a peacock's tail." Influenced, perhaps, by Captain Hall's de- 

 scription, and the figure of Urania given in his work, Mr. M. had been accustomed, 

 he said, to think of Ulodendron — though his evidence on the subject was still far from 

 ample — as a plant somewhat resembling in its contour the old Jewish candlestick, as 

 sculptured on the arch of Titus. Mr. M. then went on to show that Ulodendron was 

 not, as surmised by the authors of the ' Fossil Flora,' a mere form of Lepidodendron ; 

 though not improbably another of their genera, Bothrodendron, was a form of its At 

 least, Ulodendron, when decorticated, exactly resembles the latter plant, being mottled 

 over with minute dottings quincuncially arranged, and presenting its rectilinear line 

 of oval scars devoid of the ordinary sculpturings. After several remarks on Lepido- 

 strobus variabilis, which, as shown by specimens on the table, could not be the cone of 

 Ulodendron, as Messrs. Lindley and Hutton had surmised, but was unequivocally, as 

 had been inferred by Adolphe Brongniart, that of Lepidodendron, Mr. M. went on to 

 describe what he deemed a new species of Stigmaria, which he had found in Joppa 

 quarry. In the specimen exhibited, the characteristic areolae of the plant presented 

 the ordinary aspect. Each, however, formed the centre of a sculptured star, consisting 

 of from eighteen to twenty rays, or rather the centre of a sculptured flower of the com- 

 posite order, resembling a garden daisy, — the minute petals being ranged in three con- 

 centric lines. Mr. M. then referred to the discovery by Mr. Binney of Manchester, 

 that the Stigmariae are the roots of Sigillariae, or rather, said Mr. M., the discovery that 

 they occupy the place of roots. From a specimen on the table, it would be seen that 

 they terminated very differently from true roots, — ending as abruptly as any of the 

 Cactus tribe, and with their bud-like areolae thickly clustered at the extremities. After 

 arguing the point at considerable length, Mr. M. went on to say that it might, he 

 thought, be consistently held, that while the place and position of Stigmaria were, as 

 shown by Mr. Binney, those of true roots, just as the place and position of the rhizoma 



