70 



BRITISH EOCENE FLORA. 



veinlets are in groups they cannot be placed in Woodwardia. Another and more abundant 

 Fern, bearing a resemblance to it when figured, has been described in the same work as 

 Pecopteris, Hemitelites, and Osmunda Torellii, but the specimens themselves show the 

 Fern to have been of stronger and coarser growth. 



Onoclea hehraidica is, as pointed out by Newberry, almost identical with the existing 

 species. This is a monotypic form inhabiting the United States from Florida to 

 Canada ; Northern Asia, Amur, Japan, and Manchuria. It also somewhat resembles the 

 more tropical genus Pleocnemia. 



The specimen (PI. XIII, fig. 5) had already been figured by the Duke of Argyll in the 

 'Journal of the Geological Society,' and briefly described by Prof. E. Forbes as "part of 

 a frond, probably that of a Fern, but presenting some anomalous features which future 

 specimens will probably explain. For the present it may be called Filicites (?) 

 Jtebraidicus." Our etching represents the venation in a clearer manner than the litho- 

 graph referred to, but conveys the undulating habit less accurately. Fig. 6, selected from 

 a large number of specimens in the Hunterian Museum of the Glasgow University, was 

 found by Mr. Koch in 1880. 



The preceding notes embrace all the distinctly characterised species except 

 Meniphyllum elegans, on which no additional light can yet be thrown, and therefore 

 even its claim to be considered a Fern seems doubtful. On the other hand, one of the 

 forms, very imperfectly figured (PI. II, fig. 6), and placed among the " Filices incerta 

 sedis,^' may prove a fragment of a coniferous leaf, possibly of Dammara, 



The Ferns already mark the distinction that exists between the floras from above and 

 from below the London Clay, the few fragments from the latter belonging to quite 

 different forms. The Bournemouth flora alone has furnished examples of every Fern 

 met with in England from above the London Clay, except the Marattia, that is supposing 



votres. Vous pouvez done les identifier et tirer de cette identification les resultats qu'elle comporte. Elle 

 pourrait entrer dans les genres Aspidiura et Pliegopteris, et presqu' au meme titre ; mais il faut remarquer 

 que les Pliegopteris ne sont reellement que des Aspidium dont le tegument avorte, et, sans fructification 

 vous ne pouvez arriver a une determination plus precise. 



" Vous avez d'une part V Aspidium Leuzeanum, Kunze {A. coadunatum,y^&\\., ' Ett. Farnkraiiter,' pi. 128, 

 fig. 6), d'autre part vous avez le Phegopteris macrodonta, Mett., etle P. Brongniarti, Mett. ; avec ces derniers 

 le rapprochement est encore plus frappant a cause de I'extreme analogic du reseau veineux. J'ajouterai 

 encore comme indice que parmi les especes inedites des Gypses d'Aix (eocene superieur) je possede une 

 belle empreinte de penne de Foufjere qui me parait se ranger fort naturellement dans ce naeme genre 

 Phegopteris, non pas precisement a cote de la votre mais tout aupres du Phegopteris prolifera, Mett. La 

 figure de cette espece dans I'ouvrage d'Ettingshausen, tab. cix, fig. 2, est une reproduction presque exacte 

 de mon echantillon, que je nomme Phegopteris provincialis, mais que je n'ai encore ni decrit ni figure." 



