48 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



DEVONIAN PLANTS FROM OHIO. 



By J. S. Newberry. 



( Read by title September 2 1889.) 



Among the materials prepared for the third volume of the Pal- 

 aeontology of Ohio, are drawings and descriptions of many species 

 of fossil plants and fossil fishes which well deserved publication. 

 As there seemed no probability that another volume of Palaeon- 

 tology would be published by the State, I have added to the 

 descriptions of the remarkable fossil fishes found in Ohio, notes on 

 those obtained elsewhere, and have formed from all a Monograph 

 of the Fossil Fishes of the Palaeozoic Rocks of North America, which 

 has just been published by the United States Geological Survey. 



Among the fossil plants of which I have drawings and notes, 

 there are a few from the Devonian rocks that are of special interest 

 from their antiquity, their botanical character and mode of occur- 

 rence. Of these I herewith present figures and descriptions. I 

 have also a number of new species of plants from the Coal Meas- 

 ures, of which drawings and descriptions have been prepared, and 

 which will, perhaps, be made the subject of another memoir. 



The land plants of the Devonian system have naturally excited 

 much curiosity, as they form, if not the beginnings, at least the 

 first considerable development of terrestrial vegetation, and it was 

 hoped they would do much to illustrate the progress of plant life on 

 the globe, and would throw light on the question of how the higher 

 forms were evolved from the lower. It must be confessed, how- 

 ever, that while they have given us fascinating glimpses of the head 

 of the column of terrestrial vegetation that has marched across the 

 earth's stage during the different geological ages, they have given 

 us little insight into the spirit of the movement. They have shown 

 us an important phase of plant evolution, but have helped us little 

 in our efforts to understand the cause and modus of this incessant 

 advance from the simple to the more complex, the general to the 

 special. 



It is only within a few years that any considerable number of 

 fossil plants have been obtained from the Devonian rocks. Unger 



