46 



FOSSIL PLANTS. 



portions of the plant have been converted into carbonate of lime, while the sporangia or 

 macrospores consist of parafline. In my cabinet is a mass of macrospores, near a cone 

 mth sporangia, and these bodies, on light being transmitted through them, show in their 

 interior granular bodies, in appearance like the coriaceous envelope of the macrospore in 

 which they are enclosed. 



Mr. Carruthers, in his Memoir, appears to class all the spore-like bodies found 

 in coals and ironstones, whether they have a rough or smooth outside, or are fur- 

 nished with a tri-radiate ridge on the lower part or not, as sporangia, under his new 

 genus Fleinincjites. This appears to me to be going probably rather too far, in the present 

 state of our knowledge. These bodies, be they sporangia or macrospores, appear to have 

 been a common form of the organs of fructification during the Carboniferous Epoch ; 

 and, although doubtless some of the sporangia containing them were arranged spirally 

 round the column of the cone, as in Lejndostrobus, others were arranged verticillately in 

 whorls around the axis, as in the organs of fructification of Calamodendron commune. As 

 to the latter, Mr. Carruthers appears to think, according to his statement in the ' Geolo- 

 gical Magazine'^ (vol. vi, p. 155), that none of them have been found so arranged. A 

 specimen, however, will be described in this Monograph, not only showing this verticillate 

 arrangement, but the connection of the cone with a stem bearing branches and leaves, 

 hence the genus Fleminpfes, if it remain, will scarcely suffice to hold all the disc-shaped 

 l)odies described by Professor Morris, myself, Goldenberg, Balfour, and others. As to 

 their all being macrospores, it appears to me there can be little doubt but there are 

 macrospores not of one plant, but of many distinct plants. 



IV. Description of the Specimens. 



§ 1. The Specimens {Lepidodendron Ilarcourtii and Lepidodendron vasculare), 

 ■ Nos. 17, 18, 19, and 20. Plates VII and VIII. 



Specimen No. 17, Lepidodendron Harcourtii (Plate VII, figs. 1 — 5, 7 — 10). 

 Pig. 1 is a fragment of a cone, one and a half inches in length, one and a quarter 

 inches across its major, and one inch across its minor axis. Although doubtless originally 

 cylindrical, it has now somewhat of an oval section. The outside of the fossil, which is 

 deprived of the upper portions of its scales or bracts, exhibits rhomboidal scars in every 

 respect similar to those usually found on Lepidostrohus ornatus ; and is most probably either 

 the middle or the upper part of such a cone, It was found in a calcareous nodule from 

 the Upper Poot Coal, near Oldham (marked with three asterisks in the section previously 



' In this paper Mr. Carruthers states that Lepidostrobus variabilis is really a specimen of Flemingites 

 (/racilis. 



