150 MR ROBERT KIDSTON ON THE FRUCTIFICATION OF 



Neuropteris heterophylla, Brongniart. 

 Plate VIII. fig. 7. 



Neuropteris heterophylla, Brongniart, "Classification desVeg^taux Fossiles," Extract from Memoires 

 du Museum cV histoire naturelle, tome viii. p. 33, pi. ii. fig. 6, 1822. 

 Hist. d. Vegctaux Fossiles, p. 243, pi. lxxi. and pi. lxxii. fig. 2, 1828. 



Neuropteris Loshii, Brongniart, Hist. d. VegHaux Fossiles, p. 242, pi. lxxii. fig. 1, and pi. lxxiii. 

 1828. 



Several authors have described what they believe was the fructification of 

 the genus Neuropteris, Brongniart, but in all these cases the supposed fruit was 

 either a parasitic fungus, or the fern bearing the fruit described had been 

 referred to the genus Neuropteris in error. 



As early as 1826, Hoffmann figured what he regarded as the fruit of his 

 Neuropteris ovata.* This consisted of a single lanceolate pinnule, 3 cm. long 

 and 1 cm. wide, whose basal extremity appears to me rather to lie under the 

 stem which is supposed to have borne it than to be attached to it. The upper 

 surface of this supposed fruiting pinnule shows an indistinct granulation. Its 

 preservation is, however, so imperfect that it seems impossible to say that 

 this supposed fruit belongs to N. ovata, or even to any other member of the 

 genus Neuropteris. 



The next supposed fruit of Neuropteris was figured by Brongniart in his 

 Hist. d. veget. foss., p. 239, plate lxv. figs. 3 and 3a, where certain linear 

 swellings situated between the nerves are irregularly scattered over the upper 

 surface of a pinnule of Neuropteris Jlexuosa. In a subsequent part of the same 

 work, p. 326, Brongniart corrected this erroneous interpretation of these 

 bodies, and refers them to parasitic fungi, a view which receives confirmation 

 from the occurrence of similar organisms on ferns belonging to different recent 

 genera. 



Almost conclusive evidence against these bodies being the fruit of ferns 

 is further afforded by their occupying the tissue of the pinnules between the 

 veins, whereas the fruit of ferns is situated on some part of their nervation. 



In 1880 Fontaine and White, in their Permian and Upper Carboniferous 

 Flora, give a figure of N hirsuta,f showing what they believed to be its fructifica- 

 tion, but again this supposed fruit appears to be only another of those parasitic 

 fungi, and one which seems very closely related to the species affecting the 

 specimen of N Jlexuosa described by Brongniart. The supposed sori figured by 



* " Uber die Pflanzcnreste des Kohlengebirgcs von Ibbenbiihren und vom Piesberge bei 

 Osnabruck, " in Keferstein's Teuchland geognostisch-geologisch dargetsellt, vol. iv. p. 158, pi. i. figs. 

 5-8, Weimar, 1826. His fig. 8 is the supposed fruiting pinnule. 



t " Second Gcol. Survey of Pennsylvania, Report of Progress P.P.," The Permian or Upper Carbon- 

 iferous Flora of West Virginia and S.-W. Pennsylvania, p. 47, pi. viii. figs. 7, 8, Harrisburg, 1880. 



