ON NEW ERIAN ( DEVONIAN) TLANTS. 



290 



23. Notes on New Erian (Devonian) Plants. By J. W. Dawson, 

 LL.D., F.RS., E.G.S., Principal of H c Gill College, Montreal. 

 (Read June 23, 1880.) 



[Plates XII. & XIII.] 



The principal purpose of the present paper is to add a few new facts 

 to our knowledge of the Precarboniferous flora of Eastern America. 

 Since the publication, in the Journal of this Society, of my paper, 

 " Eurther Observations on the Devonian Plants of Maine, daspe, 

 and New York" (1863), and that on "Eossil Eerns of the Devo- 

 nian" (1871), a large addition was made to the knowledge both of 

 the species of plants and of the general character and conditions of 

 Devonian and Upper Silurian vegetation in my " Report on the 

 Devonian and Upper Silurian Plants of Canada"*. In a subsequent 

 report on the "Plants of the Lower Carboniferous and Millstone 

 Griff, I endeavoured, by the aid of the American formations, to 

 remove the perplexities that had been caused by the disputes re- 

 specting the age of the Kiltorcan beds in Ireland and the so-called 

 " Ursa-stage " of Bear Island, difficulties which, however, still appear 

 to constitute subjects of discussion. 



In 1878 I contributed a paper to the Geological Society of Edin- 

 burgh, entitled " Notes on Scottish Devonian Plants," comparing 

 these plants with those of America, and at the same time establish- 

 ing the genus Ptilophytonr for those remarkable pinnately-leaved 

 Lycopodiaceous plants of which Lycopodites Vannxemii of the De- 

 vonian of New York and L. plumula of the Lower Carboniferous of 

 Nova Scotia are types, and of which Pt. Thomsoni is a Scottish re- 

 presentative described in the paper above referred to. 



Since the publication of these reports and papers several interest- 

 ing new forms have come into my hands from the Devonian or Erian 

 of North America, to which I shall add two new species, one from 

 Scotland and one from Australia, kindly communicated to me by 

 friends in those countries. 



Plants from the Erian {Devonian) of New Yorlc. 

 1. Asteropteris noveboracensis, gen. & sp. n. (PI. XII. figs. 1-9.) 



The genus Asteropteris is established for stems of Eerns having the 

 axial portion composed of vertical radiating plates of scalariform 

 tissue imbedded in parenchyma, and having the outer cylinder com- 

 posed of elongated cells traversed by leaf-bundles of the type of 

 those of Zygopteris. 



* Geol. Survey of Canada, 1871, pp. 100, 20 plates, 

 t Ibid. 1873, pp. 47, 10 plates. 



j Ptilophyton may perhaps be considered too near to Psilojphyton, but the 

 sound of the names is quite different. In a recent Report of the Regents of 

 New York, Hall has stated his belief that Pt. Vanuxemii is not a plant but a 

 zoophyte. He does not fully state the reasons for this conclusion ; but should 

 this view be established with regard to this species, then Goppert's Lycopodites 

 jpenncBformis or my L. plumula may serve as the type of the genus. 



