350 J. S. Newberry — Rhcetic Plants from Honduras. 



divisions of the frond are not carried down to the rachis and 

 the nervation is much finer. A similar and perhaps an identi- 

 cal species of Nilssonia occurs in the Triassic coal basin of 

 Sonora, Mexico. 



JVoggerathiopsis, sp. 



Among the fossil plants from Honduras, as well as those col- 

 lected by Pemond in Sonora, are some which perhaps repre- 

 sent different genera, certainly different species, but which are 

 alike in having spatulate or wedge-shaped leaves several inches 

 long, traversed by a fine or coarse parallel neryation. Part of 

 these undoubtedly belong to the genus Noggerathiopsis so 

 common in the Mesozoic rocks of Australia and India, but they 

 are too imperfect to be satisfactorily identified or described. 

 Some of them must have been a foot or more in length, and 

 they differ considerably in' shape, either expanding rapidly or 

 being long and strap like. The nervation is sometimes so fine 

 as scarcely to be visible, in other cases very coarse, but exact. 



Several ferns are contained in the collection, but the speci- 

 mens, are too much weathered and decayed to permit of their 

 identification or satisfactory study. All these, with many other 

 things of which only fragments have been obtained by Mr. 

 Leggett, will doubtless receive attention and elucidation from 

 those who hereafter may have an opportunity of studying the 

 rich flora which it is the object of this paper to bring to the 

 notice of geologists. 



This discovery of a Triassic flora in Honduras is a matter of 

 special interest, as nothing of the kind had before been met 

 with in that section of the globe ; but it is only another illus- 

 tration of the uniformity of the vegetation of the world during 

 the Triassic age. This uniformity was, however, only a develop- 

 ment of the systematic progress of plant life. The reign of 

 Acrogens ended with the Permian. The Phsetic epoch was 

 therefore about the middle of the reign of Gymnosperms. No 

 Angiosperms were yet in existence, for they began in the 

 Cretaceous. Hence, after the decadence of the Zepidodendra, 

 Sigillarice, Catamites and Cordaites, the whole world was 

 opened to occupation by the new dynasty of plants, the Gym- 

 nosperms (Cycads and Conifers) and the peculiar group of 

 Mesozoic ferns. They lost no time in entering upon their 

 promised lar,d and spread until they covered all portions of 

 the, to them, habitable globe. 



Where the Gymnospermous flora originated, or how it was 

 developed from the Acrogens, if it was so developed, and 

 through the exercise of what elements of superiority it su- 

 perseded them, we are as yet in ignorance. It is, however, 



