The Genus Sphenophyllum. 213 
they review and compare the species known up to that time. In 
the general remarks on the genus, page g, these authors say: 
““Les Sphenophyllum etaient sans doute des vegetaux aquatiques ou des 
plantes de marais; plusieurs espaces, notamment les Sphenophyllum emarginatum 
et S. saxifragaefolium, a cote des feuilles typiques nous en montrent d’autres, 
inferieures et plus ou moins profoundement decoupees, a peu pres comme on 
Vobserve oujourd’hui sur plusieures especes du genre Batrachium. Comme 
dans ce dernier cas, ees feuilles modifiees des Sphenophyllum etaient probable- 
ment submergees, et cette observation, qui n’avait pas encore ete faite, nous 
semble d’une grande valeur pour determiner le milieu dans lequel vivaient 
autrefois ces plantes.”’ 
It will be seen from the above quotation that ten years after the 
publication of my notes on Sphenophyllum, my observations on the 
difference between the emerged and submerged leaves were con- 
firmed by the Belgian palaeontologists with no knowledge that I 
had published the same facts. 
In 1869, Prof. W. P. Schimper issued the first volume of his 
Palaeontologie Vegetale, and on page 338 copies the paragraph 
quoted above with no reference to my notes or figures. 
On Plate XIX, Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4 represent the diversity in the 
_ vegetative organs in Sphenophyllum more clearly than has heretofore 
been made known. Figure 1 is what I have supposed to be an 
emerged branch, such as occurred at the top of the plant on which 
the leaves are wedge-shaped, truncate, serrate and are traversed 
by dichotomous nerves which terminate in the teeth of the margin. 
Normally there are six leaves in a verticil. Figure 2 represents a 
branchlet lower down on the plant, in which the leaves are deeply 
divided generally into two lobes of which the extremities are split. 
Figure 3 represents a branch still lower down in which the leaves 
are all reduced to simple flaments and are very numerous, proba- 
bly eighteen in a whorl, but it is not easy to determine their exact 
number. Figure 4 is a larger branch with its verticils of capillary 
leaves. Such a specimen would be accepted anywhere among 
fossil botanists as a species of Asterophyllites and there is little 
doubt that several of the species of this ill-defined genus are but 
submerged portions of Sphenophyllum. Figure 9 represents the 
main stem of a plant of Sphenophyllum ; it is jointed at short inter- 
vals and gives off branches like Figure 4 from the joints. The 
surface is longitudinally striated and obscurely ridged as are the 
joints of the branches; it is very much flattened. and apparently 
had little woody tissue in it. 
