116 Journal of the Mitchell Society. [Dec. 



pass to the periplasm. One nuclus is retained by 

 the coenocentrum. The fertilization is simple, there- 

 fore, and not multiple as in some other species. 

 Minor peculiarities concerning the formation of the 

 walls and development of the coenocentrum, etc., 

 were described. 



2. Forecasts of the Sky, or, Expected Notable 



Objects: Jno. F. Lanneau. 



3. A Liriodexdrox From the Deep River Triassic: 



Collier Cobb. 



The tulip tree is the lone survivor of an ancient race 

 known to extend back into Cretaceous time, from 

 which time its family history has been traced, and 

 "we find this history epitomised in the existing" 

 species". Holm considers the primitive ancestral 

 type of Lyiriodendron to have been a simple, magnolia- 

 like leaf; for not only do all modern relatives of 

 Liridodendron have such leaves, but "there is a 

 progressive simplification and reduction in lobation 

 as we proceed back in time, the most primitive forms 

 known having ovate or oblong simple leaves". The 

 youngest leaves on our modern tulip trees are entire 

 or merely slightly notched, while the mature ones are 

 typically lobed leaves. Hence it is imagined that the 

 primitive tulip tree that grew in early Cretaceous or 

 Jura-Cretaceous time had simple ovate or lanceolate 

 leaves, short petioled and without stipules or bud 

 scales, and with venation much like the existing 

 magnolia leaf. The leaf here presented has the 

 lobate form common in the American Cretaceous, 

 when the modern form is supposed to have become 

 practically fixed in L. oblongifolium of the Amboy 

 clays. But this specimen came from the light brown 

 shales of the Deep River Triassic at Cumnock 

 (Egypt), and is found in association with Macrotae- 

 mo+>teris magnifolia. somewhat common in the 

 Triassic coal measures of Virginia, and Taeniopteris 

 Newbemana. a well-marked Permian plant. The 

 chief interest in the finding of this plant in the Deep 

 River beds, probably near the base of the Triassic, 

 lies in the fact that it is the mature form of leaf, and 



