White — New Fossil Plant from Bahia, Brazil. 633 



Art. LIV. — A New Fossil Plant from the State of Bahia, 

 Brazil • by David White. 



In the summer of 1911 the writer received from Dr. J. C. 

 Brainier a small package of fossil plants collected at Fazenda 

 Jacii, four miles northeast of the village of Aracy, and twenty 

 eight miles north of Serrinha, State of Bahia. The material 

 is of two kinds: (1) several pieces of very imperfectly pre- 

 served fossil w T ood in which the greater part of the space once 

 occupied by the tissues is now replaced by fine-grained ferrugi- 

 nous sand, rendering the material of no paleontological value ; 

 (2) four small fragments of rather fine-grained, ash-colored, 

 clay shale containing small flakes of mica, and slightly tinged 

 with purple. These fragments, the two largest of which are 

 shown, natural size, in figures 1 and 2, hold numerous pieces 

 of the pinnae of a fern-like type associated with but not at- 

 tached to a portion of a small stem or rachis. The latter is 

 now partly carbonized, being represented by a very thin layer 

 of coal, the greater part of the plant substance having rotted. 

 The laminae of the fronds are likewise carbonized and are repre- 

 sented in the specimens by a dull, minutely granular, coaly 

 residue, the topography of which is that of the original plant. 

 The carbonaceous residue is apparently spongy, and the pinnae 

 were evidently somewhat macerated. For these reasons the 

 nervation is best seen in those impressions from which the 

 carbon has been removed. 



When the specimens were received from Doctor Branner, 

 there being no rocks older than Cretaceous known throughout 

 the extensive region including the plant locality, the fragments 

 were at once placed for examination in the hands of Dr. F. H. 

 Knowlton, the specialist in the post-Paleozoic floras, in the 

 IT. S. Geological Survey. Later they were returned by Doctor 

 Knowlton for the reason that he did not regard them as repre- 

 senting any known type of Mesozoic or Tertiary plants, the 

 aspect of the specimens being rather that of the Paleozoic 

 genus Alethopteris. 



The general form and appearance of the pinnae are fairly well 

 shown in the fragments on the two pieces of shale photographed 

 as figures 1 and 2. Several small pieces of pinnae on the two 

 smaller fragments of shale are not illustrated. These show 

 the pinna to "be probably linear, tapering to a narrow acute 

 apex. In some fragments, like that shown in fig. 2, the pin- 

 nules are close, while in others, such as the portion seen in 

 fig. 1, they are somewhat distant. The rachis, which is oc- 

 cupied by a much denser carbonaceous residue, is irregularly 



