4 PERMIAN FOSSILS. 



Diagnosis. — '' F. caule pinnatum ramosa^ foliis sparsis numerosis, caulem indique, 

 tegentibus, oblongo-linearibus membranaceis (?) enervis."^ 



After examining a number of specimens, none of which, however, were so 

 instructive as could be desired, the writer feels it necessary to unite the three so-called 

 species Voltzia Phillipsii, Lind. and Hutt., Fucoides selaginoides, Sternb., and F. lycopo- 

 doides, Sternb., the differences being so slight, that he is strongly persuaded they 

 represent different parts of the same species. 



The form named Fucoides lycopodoides, according to M. Ad. Brongniart, strongly 

 resembles those Caulerpas with distichous leaves, as C.pennata, Tourn., and C. taxifolia, 

 Tourn. : it appears to differ from them simply in the leaves being larger, and less 

 regularly arranged. The specimen of C. selaginoides figured in the ' Histoire des 

 Vegetaux Fossiles' agrees in many respects with the C. selago. 



Pinna (j) prisca, Miinster, appears to be a compressed portion of the stem of 

 Caulerpa (?) selaginoides. Fragments of a vegetable fossil occasionally occur in the 

 Marl-slate strikingly resembling the figure in Count Miinster's ' Beitrage,' and which 

 it is difiicult to conceive to be anything else but the remains of the stem of this plant. 

 They are transversely barred, somewhat as in the fossil figured by Count Miinster, 

 a character which appears to be due to transverse cracks, resulting from the shrinking 

 up of the (cellular ?) substance of which they were composed. 



As Professor Sedgwick, in the Supplement to his paper (Trans. Geol. Soc. 2d series, 

 vol. iii, p. 239), doubts " the two vegetable impressions," noticed by him elsewhere 

 (Op. cit. pp. n, 120), as being "two species of Fern," it is suggested that one of 

 them may have been the fossil under consideration: there can be little doubt, 

 however, that at least one of them was a plant of this kind (vide Neur.opteris 

 Huttoniana) . 



Caulerpa (?) selaginoides occurs in the Marl-slate at Thrislington Gap, Midderidge 

 (Sedgwick), Cornforth, Whitley, Cullercoats Bay, Brussleton, and Thickley, but 

 nowhere is it very common. Geinitz records it as occurring in the equivalent rock 

 (Kupferschiefer) at Mansfeld, Ilmenau, and Reichelsdorf ; and in the lower Zechstein 

 of Corbusen, Germany. The so-called Pinna (?) prisca is stated to occur in the 

 Kupferschiefer of Merzenberge near Gera, between Milbitz and Thieschiitz.^ 



' Brongniart, Histoire des Veg6taux Fossiles, p. 23, 1828. 



2 A privately published lithograph appeared a few years since, representing a specimen of a gigantic 

 Fucus, apparently of the genus Ealymenia, found in the New Red Sandstone at Woodside, on the 

 Mersey. As it is questionable whether this f^irmation belongs to the upper division of the Permian system, 

 or the inferior portion of the Trias, it has been deemed advisable to allude to this fossil only thus in- 

 cidentally. For the same reason, a mere notice must suffice for the fucoids discovered by Mr. J. S. Dawes in 

 probably the same formation, between Birmingham and Walsall, (Vide Report of the British Association, 

 held at Manchester, 1842, p. 47 ; Transactions of the Sections.) 



