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V. — On the Fossil Flora of the Yorkshire Coal Field. (First Paper.) 

 By Robert Kidston, F.R.S.E., F.G.S. (Plates I. -III.) 



(Read 15th July 1895.) 



For many years the Fossil Flora of the Yorkshire Coal Field has been engaging my 

 attention, and among the species occurring in that district are many of considerable 

 interest. This Coal Field supplied Artis with the specimens which he figured and 

 described in his Antediluvian Phytology* 



In 1888, at the Annual Meeting of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, held at 

 Malton, a committee was formed for the investigation of the Fossil Flora of Yorkshire, 

 and since that date four Reports have been prepared and published based upon specimens 

 submitted to me for examination by private collectors, and from collections contained 

 in public museums.t These Reports only contain lists of the species found, and the 

 localities and horizons from which the specimens were derived, with any occasional 

 short notes that might have been thought necessary.J All detailed descriptions or 

 critical remarks were deferred, and the present paper is the first of what I hope may 

 be several, dealing more in detail with the Fossil Flora of the Yorkshire Coal Field. 



Of the many species occurring in this area, none are more interesting than the 

 Filicites plumosus, Artis, and the Filicites Miltoni, Artis ; and to the consideration of 

 the former of these two species the present paper is devoted. 



Filicites plumosus, Artis, is an extremely variable species, and though this fern 

 occurs in many of the British Coal Fields, and is frequent in the Upper and Middle 

 Coal Measures, the greater portion of the specimens described and figured in this com- 

 munication have been derived from the shales associated with the Barnsley Thick Coal, 

 one of the seams of the Middle Coal Measures of Yorkshire, and which is on the same 

 horizon as that from which the type specimen of Artis was derived at Elsecar, York- 

 shire. It is chiefly for this latter reason that I deal so largely with Yorkshire 



* Antediluvian Phytology, illustrated by a collection of the Fossil Remains of Plants peculiar to the Coal Forma- 

 tions of Great Britain. By Edmund Tyrell Artis, F.S.A., F.G.S., London. In all the copies I have seen, the Intro- 

 duction to the work is dated 1st September 1825, but the title-page bears the date 1838. This latter date is evidently 

 that of a later issue, or second edition of the work, and may only be an alteration of the title-page of the copies sub- 

 sequently issued. Each of the twenty-four plates contained in the volume bears the date of 1824. That the work was 

 issued at least ten years before 1838 is evidenced by the fact that Brongniaet quotes the book in his Prodrome d'une 

 Mstoire des veg&aux fossiles, published in Paris in 1828. Probably, therefore, 1825 is the true date for the first issue 

 of the Antediluvian Phytology. 



t The Yorkshire Carboniferous Flora — 



First Report, Trans. York. Nat. Union, part xiv., 1890, pp. 1-64. 



Second Report, „ „ part xviii., 1893, pp. 65-82. 



Third Report, „ „ part xviii., 1893, pp. 83-96. 



Fourth Report (with Index to the four Reports), part xviii., 1893, pp. 97-127. 

 \ The names of those to whom the Committee were indebted for assistance are given in these Reports. I am 

 however, almost entirely indebted to Mr W. Hemingway for my fine series of Yorkshire specimens of Dactylotheca 

 plumosa, Artis, sp., from which largely the present paper has been written. 



VOL. XXXVIII. PART II. (NO. 5). 2 E 



